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HARVARD 
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LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF 
THOMAS    HENRY   HUXLEY 


^^^'i   ni  oij'/n  '^.1,'n:  !:hj:^'1  u  (noil  tluijJoS 


Ji-iw^-^'V 


a 


I 


Portrait  from  a  Daguerreotype  made  in  1846. 


LIFE  AND  LETTERS 


OF 


THOMAS  HENRY  HUXLEY 


BY   HIS  SON 

LEONARD   HUXLEY 


IN  T^VO  VOLUMES 
VOL.    I 


NEW    YORK 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

1901 


7-J-^t-hi-.4:^^^:S^^ 


XE  S^Y^o 


C0LLC6E 


Copyright,  1900, 
By  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  AMERICAN  EDITION 


The  American  edition  of  the  Life  and  Letters  of  Thonias 
Henry  Huxley  calls  for  a  few  words  by  way  of  preface,  for 
there  existed  a  particular  relationship  between  the  English 
writer  and  his  transatlantic  readers. 

From  the  time  that  his  Lay  Sermons  was  published  his 
essays  found  in  the  United  States  an  eager  audience,  who 
appreciated  above  all  things  his  directness  and  honesty  of 
purpose  and  the  unflinching  spirit  in  which  he  pursued 
the  truth.  Whether  or  not,  as  some  affirm,  the  American 
public  "  discovered  "  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  they  responded 
at  once  to  the  influence  of  the  younger  evolutionary  writer, 
whose  wide  and  exact  knowledge  of  nature  was  but  a 
stepping-stone  to  his  interest  in  human  life  and  its  prob- 
lems. And  when,  a  few  years  later,  after  more  than  one 
invitation,  he  came  to  lecture  in  the  United  States  and  made 
himself  personally  known  to  his  many  readers,  it  was  this 
widespread  response  to  his  influence  which  made  his  wel- 
come comparable,  as  was  said  at  the  time,  to  a  royal 
progress. 

His  own  interest  in  the  present  problems  of  the  country 
and  the  possibilities  of  its  future  was  always  keen,  not 
merely  as  touching  the  development  of  a  vast  political 
force — one  of  the  dominant  factors  of  the  near  future — but 
far  more  as  touching  the  character  of  its  approaching  great- 
ness. Huge  territories  and  vast  resources  were  of  small 
interest  to  him  in  comparison  with  the  use  to  which  they 
should  be  put.  None  felt  more  vividly  than  he  that  the 
true  greatness  of  a  nation  would  depend  upon  the  spirit 
of  the  principles  it  adopted,  upon  the  character  of  the  indi- 
viduals who  make  up  the  nation  and  shape  the  channels 
in  which  the  currents  of  its  being  will  hereafter  flow. 


vi  LIFE   OF   PROFESSOR    HUXLEY 

This  was  the  note  he  struck  in  the  appeal  for  intellectual 
sincerity  and  clearness  which  he  made  at  the  end  of  his 
New  York  Lectures  on  Evolution.  The  same  note  domi- 
nates that  letter  to  his  sister — a  Southerner  by  adoption 
— which  gives  his  reading  of  the  real  issue  at  stake  in 
the  great  civil  war.  Slavery  is  bad  for  the  slave,  but  far 
worse  for  the  master,  as  sapping  his  character  and  making 
impossible  that  moral  vigour  of  the  individual  on  which  is 
based  the  collective  vigour  of  the  nation. 

The  interest  with  which  he  followed  the  later  develop- 
ment of  social  problems  need  not  be  dwelt  on  here,  except 
to  say  that  he  watched  their  earlier  maturity  in  America 
as  an  indication  of  the  problems  which  would  afterwards 
call  for  a  solution  in  his  own  country.  His  share  in  treat- 
ing them  was  limited  to  examining  the  principles  of  social 
philosophy  on  which  some  of  the  proposed  remedies  for 
social  troubles  were  based,  and  this  examination  may  be 
found  in  his  Collected  Essays.  But  the  educational  cam- 
paign which  he  carried  on  in  England  had  its  counterpart 
in  America.  It  was  not  only  that  he  was  chosen  to  open 
the  Johns  Hopkins  University  as  the  type  of  a  new  form 
of  education ;  there  and  elsewhere  pupils  of  his  carried  out 
in  America  his  methods  of  teaching  biology,  while  others 
engaged  in  general  education  would  write  testifying  to  the 
influence  of  his  ideas  upon  their  own  methods  of  teaching. 
But  it  must  be  remembered  that  nothing  was  further  from 
his  mind  than  the  desire  to  found  a  school  of  thought.  He 
only  endeavoured  as  a  scholar  and  a  student  to  clear  up 
his  own  thoughts  and  help  others  to  clear  theirs,  whether 
in  the  intellectual  or  the  moral  world.  This  was  the 
help  he  steadfastly  hoped  to  give  the  people,  that  interact- 
ing union  of  intellectual  freedom  and  moral  discernment 
which  may  be  furthered  by  good  education  and  training, 
by  precept  and  example,  that  basis  of  all  social  health  and 
prosperity.  And  if,  as  he  said,  he  would  like  to  be  remem- 
bered as  one  who  had  done  his  best  to  help  the  people, 
he  meant  assuredly  not  the  people  only  of  his  native  land, 
but  the  wider  world  to  whom  his  words  could  be  carried. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  ENGLISH   EDITION 


My  father's  life  was  one  of  so  many  interests,  and  his 
work  was  at  all  times  so  diversified,  that  to  follow  each 
thread  separately,  as  if  he  had  been  engaged  on  that  alone 
for  a  time,  would  be  to  give  a  false  impression  of  his  activity 
and  the  peculiar  character  of  his  labours.  All  through  his 
active  career  he  was  equally  busy  with  research  into  nature, 
with  studies  in  philosophy,  with  teaching  and  administra- 
tive work.  The  real  measure  of  his  energy  can  only  be 
found  when  all  these  are  considered  together.  Without 
this  there  can  be  no  conception  of  the  limitations  imposed 
upon  him  in  his  chosen  life's  work.  The  mere  amount  of 
his  research  is  greatly  magnified  by  the  smallness  of  the 
time  allowed  for  it. 

But  great  as  was  the  impression  left  by  these  researches 
in  purely  scientific  circles,  it  is  not  by  them  alone  that  he 
made  his  impression  upon  the  mass  of  his  contemporaries. 
They  were  chiefly  moved  by  something  over  and  above 
his  wide  knowledge  in  so  many  fields — by  his  passionate 
sincerity,  his  interest  not  only  in  pure  knowledge,  but  in 
human  life,  by  his  belief  that  the  interpretation  of  the  book 
of  nature  was  not  to  be  kept  apart  from  the  ultimate  prob- 
lems of  existence;  by  the  love  of  truth,  in  short,  both 
theoretical  and  practical,  which  gave  the  key  to  the  char- 
acter of  the  man  himself. 

Accordingly,  I  have  not  discussed  with  any  fulness  the 
value  of  his  technical  contributions  to  natural  science;  I 
have  not  drawn  up  a  compendium  of  his  philosophical 
views.  One  is  a  work  for  specialists;  the  other  can  be 
gathered  from  his  published  works.  I  have  endeavoured 
rather  to  give  the  public  a  picture,  so  far  as  I  can,  of  the 
man  himself,  of  his  aims  in  the  many  struggles  in  which 
i»  vii 


viii  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY 

he  was  engaged,  of  his  character  and  temperament,  and 
the  circumstances  under  which  his  various  works  were  be- 
gun and  completed. 

So  far  as  possible,  I  have  made  his  letters,  or  extracts 
from  them,  tell  the  story  of  his  life.  If  those  of  any  given 
period  are  diverse  in  tone  and  character,  it  is  simply  because 
they  reflect  an  equal  diversity  of  occupations  and  interests. 
Few  of  the  letters,  however,  are  of  any  great  length ;  many 
are  little  more  than  hurried  notes ;  others,  mainly  of  private 
interest,  supply  a  sentence  here  and  there  to  fill  in  the 
general  outline. 

Moreover,  whenever  circumstances  permit,  I  have  en- 
deavoured to  make  my  own  part  in  the  book  entirely  im- 
personal. My  experience  is  that  the  constant  iteration  by 
the  biographer  of  his  relationship  to  the  subject  of  his 
memoir,  can  become  exasperating  to  the  reader;  so  that 
at  the  risk  of  offending  in  the  opposite  direction,  I  have 
chosen  the  other  course. 

Lastly,  I  have  to  express  my  grateful  thanks  to  all  who 
have  sent  me  letters  or  supplied  information,  and  espe- 
cially to  Dr.  J.  H.  Gladstone,  Sir  Mountstuart  Grant  Duff, 
Professor  Howes,  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick,  and  Sir 
Spencer  Walpole,  for  their  contributions  to  the  book;  but 
above  all  to  Sir  Joseph  Hooker  and  Sir  Michael  Foster, 
whose  invaluable  help  in  reading  proofs  and  making  sug- 
gestions has  been,  as  it  were,  a  final  labour  of  love  for  the 
memory  of  their  old  friend. 


CONTENTS 


CHAFTBR 
I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 


825-1842)       I 

841-1846) 16 

846-1849) 31 

848-1850) 44 

850-1851) 60 

851-1854) 17 

851-1853) 5^ 

854)                 "7 

855) 138 

855-1858) 142 

857-1858) .  .154 

859-1860) 164 

859) 178 

859-1860) 188 

860-1863) 205 

860-1861) 225 

861-1863) 247 

864) 269 

865) 283 

866) 294 

867) 306 

8) 316 

869) 330 

870) 346 

ix 


X  LIFE   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY 

CHAPTBR  PAGE 

XXV.  (1871) 383 

XXVL  (1872) 394 

XXVH.  (1873) 418 

XXVIIL  (1874) 436 

XXIX.  (1875-1876) 459 

XXX.  (1875-1876) 475 

XXXI.  (1876) 489 

XXXII.  (1877) 507 

XXXIII.  (1878) 520 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


PACING 
PAGB 


Portrait  from  a  Daguerrotype  made  in  1846                 Frontispiece 
Facsimile  of  Sketch,  *'  The  Loves  and  Graces  "        .        .        .85 
Portrait  from  a  Photograph  by  Maull  and  Polyblank,  1857      .     160 
No.  4  Marlborough  Place — from  the  Garden.    After  a  Water- 
colour  Sketch  by  R.  Huxley 412 

Portrait  from  a  Photograph  by  Elliott  and  Fry;  Steel  Engrav- 
ing in  Nature^  February  5,  1874 436 


CHAPTER   I 
1825-1842 

In  the  year  1825  Ealing  was  as  quiet  a  country  village  as 
could  be  found  within  a  dozen  miles  of  Hyde  Park  Comer. 
Here  stood  a  large  semi-public  school,  which  had  risen  to 
the  front  rank  in  numbers  and  reputation  under  Dr.  Nich- 
olas, of  Wadham  College,  Oxford,  who  in  1791  became  the 
son-in-law  and  successor  of  the  previous  master. 

The  senior  assistant-master  in  this  school  was  George 
Huxley,  a  tall,  dark,  rather  full-faced  man,  quick  tempered, 
and  distinguished,  in  his  son's  words,  by  "that  glorious 
firmness  which  one's  enemies  called  obstinacy."  In  the  year 
1810  he  had  married  Rachel  Withers;  she  bore  five  sons 
and  three  daughters,  of  whom  one  son  and  one  daughter 
died  in  infancy;  the  seventh  and  youngest  surviving  child 
was  Thomas  Henry. 

George  Huxley,  the  master  at  Ealing,  was  the  second 
son  of  Thomas  Huxley  and  Margaret  James,  who  were  mar- 
ried at  St.  Michael's,  Coventry,  on  September  8,  1773. 
This  Thomas  Huxley  continued  to  live  at  Coventry  until 
his  death  in  January  1796,  when  he  left  behind  him  a  large 
family  and  no  very  great  wealth.  The  most  notable  item 
in  the  latter  is  the  "  capital  Messuage,  by  me  lately  pur- 
chased of  Mrs.  Ann  Thomas,"  which  he  directs  to  be  sold 
to  pay  his  debts — ^an  inn,  apparently,  for  the  testator  is 
described  as  a  victualler.  Family  tradition  tells  that  he  came 
to  Coventry  from  Lichfield,  and  if  so,  he  and  his  sons  after 
him  exemplify  the  tendency  to  move  south,  which  is  to  be 
observed  in  those  of  the  same  name  who  migrated  from 


2  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap.  I 

their  original  home  in  Cheshire.  This  home  is  represented 
to-day  by  a  farm  in  the  Wirral,  about  eight  miles  from 
Chester,  called  Huxley  Hall.  From  this  centre  Huxleys. 
spread  to  the  neighbouring  villages,  such  as  Overton  and 
Eccleston,  Clotton  and  Duddon,  Tattenhall  and  Wettenhall ; 
others  to  Chester  and  Brindley  near  Nantwich.  The  south- 
ward movement  carries  some  to  the  Welsh  border,  others 
into  Shropshire.  The  Wettenhall  family  established  them- 
selves in  the  fourth  generation  at  Rushall,  and  held  property 
in  Handsworth  and  Walsall;  the  Brindley  family  sent  a 
branch  to  Macclesfield,  whose  representative,  Samuel,  must 
have  been  on  the  town  council  when  the  Young  Pretender 
rode  through  on  his  way  to  Derby,  for  he  was  mayor  in 
1746;  while  at  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century,  George, 
the  disinherited  heir  of  Brindley,  became  a  merchant  in 
London,  and  purchased  Wyre  Hall  at  Edmonton,  where  his 
descendants  lived  for  four  generations,  his  grandson  being 
knighted  by  Charles  H  in  1663. 

But  my  father  had  no  particular  interest  in  tracing  his 
early  ancestry.  "  My  own  genealogical  inquiries,"  he  said, 
"  have  taken  me  so  far  back  that  I  confess  the  later  stages 
do  not  interest  me."  Towards  the  end  of  his  life,  however, 
my  mother  persuaded  him  to  see  what  could  be  found  out 
about  Huxley  Hall  and  the  origin  of  the  name.  This  proved 
to  be  from  the  manor  of  Huxley  or  Hodesleia,  whereof  one 
Swanus  de  Hockenhull  was  enfeoffed  by  the  abbot  and 
convent  of  St.  Werburgh  in  the  time  of  Richard  I.  Of  the 
grandsons  of  this  Swanus,  the  eldest  kept  the  manor  and 
name  of  Hockenhull  (which  is  still  extant  in  the  Midlands) ; 
the  younger  ones  took  their  name  from  the  other  fief. 

But  the  historian  of  Cheshire  records  the  fact  that  owing 
to  the  respectability  of  the  name,  it  was  unlawfully  assumed 
by  divers  "  losels  and  lewd  fellows  of  the  baser  sort,"  and 
my  father,  with  a  fine  show  of  earnestness,  used  to  declare 
that  he  was  certain  the  legitimate  owners  of  the  name  were 
far  too  sober  and  respectable  to  have  produced  such  a 
reprobate  as  himself,  and  one  of  these  "  losels  "  must  be  his 
progenitor. 

Thomas  Henry  Huxley  was  born  at  Ealing  on  May  4, 


i825  EARLY   LIFE  3 

1825,  "  about  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning."  *  "  I  am  not 
aware,"  he  tells  us  playfully  in  his  Autobiography,  "  that 
any  portents  preceded  my  arrival  in  this  world,  but,  in  my 
childhood,  I  remember  hearing  a  traditional  account  of  the 
manner  in  which  I  lost  the  chance  of  an  endowment  of 
great  practical  value.  The  windows  of  my  mother's  room 
were  open,  in  consequence  of  the  unusual  warmth  of  the 
weather.  For  the  same  reason,  probably,  a  neighbouring 
beehive  had  swarmed,  and  the  new  colony,  pitching  on  the 
window-sill,  was  making  its  way  into  the  room  when  the 
horrified  nurse  shut  down  the  sash.  If  that  well-meaning 
woman  had  only  abstained  from  her  ill-timed  interference, 
the  swarm  might  have  settled  on  my  lips,  and  I  should  have 
been  endowed  with  that  mellifluous  eloquence  which,- in  this 
country,  leads  far  more  surely  than  worth,  capacity,  or 
honest  work,  to  the  highest  places  in  Church  and  State. 
But  the  opportunity  was  lost,  and  I  have  been  obliged  to 
content  myself  through  life  with  saying  what  I  mean  in  the 
plainest  of  plain  language,  than  which,  I  suppose,  there  is  no 
habit  more  ruinous  to  a  man's  prospects  of  advancement." 
As  to  his  debt,  physical  and  mental,  to  either  parent,  he 
writes  as  follows : — 

Physically  I  am  the  son  of  my  mother  so  completely — even 
down  to  peculiar  movements  of  the  hands,  which  made  their 
appearance  in  me  as  I  reached  the  age  she  had  when  I  noticed 
them — ^that  I  can  hardly  find  any  trace  of  my  father  in  myself, 
except  an  inborn  faculty  for  drawing,  which,  unfortunately,  in 
my  case,  has  never  been  cultivated,  a  hot  temper,  and  that 
amount  of  tenacity  of  purpose  which  unfriendly  observers  some- 
times call  obstinacy. 

My  mother  was  a  slender  brunette,  of  an  emotional  and  ener- 
getic temperament,  and  possessed  of  the  most  piercing  black 
eyes  I  ever  saw  in  a  woman's  head.  With  no  more  education 
than  other  women  of  the  middle  classes  in  her  day,  she  had  an 
excellent  mental  capacity.  Her  most  distinguishing  character- 
istic, however,  was  rapidity  of  thought.  If  one  ventured  to  sug- 
gest that  she  had  not  taken  much  time  to  arrive  at  any  conclu- 
sion, she  would  say,  "  I  cannot  help  it ;  things  flash  across  me." 

•  So  in  the  Autobiography,  but  9.30  according  to  the  Family  Bible. 


4  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  t 

That  peculiarity  has  been  passed  on  to  me  in  full  strength;  it 
has  often  stood  me  in  good  stead;  it  has  sometimes  played  me 
sad  tricks,  and  it  has  always  been  a  danger.  But,  after  all,  if 
my  time  were  to  come  over  again,  there  is  nothing  I  would  less 
willingly  part  with  than  my  inheritance  of  mother-wit. 

Restless,  talkative,  untiring  to  the  day  of  her  death,  she 
was  at  sixty-six  "  as  active  and  energetic  as  a  young  wom- 
an." His  early  devotion  to  her  was  remarkable.  Describ- 
ing her  to  his  future  wife  he  writes : — 

As  a  child  my  love  for  her  was  a  passion.  I  have  lain  awake 
for  hours  crying  because  I  had  a  morbid  fear  of  her  death ;  her 
approbation  was  my  greatest  reward,  her  displeasure  my  great- 
est punishment. 

I  have  next  to  nothing  to  say  about  my  childhood  (he  con- 
tinues in  the  Autobiography).  In  later  years  my  mother,  look- 
ing at  me  almost  reproachfully,  would  sometimes  say,  "  Ah !  you 
were  such  a  pretty  boy  I  "  whence  I  had  no  difficulty  in  conclud- 
ing that  I  had  not  fulfilled  my  early  promise  in  the  matter  of 
looks.  In  fact,  I  have  a  distinct  recollection  of  certain  curls  of 
which  I  was  vain,  and  of  a  conviction  that  I  closely  resembled 
that  handsome,  courtly  gentleman,  Sir  Herbert  Oakley,  who  was 
vicar  of  our  parish,  and  who  was  as  a  god  to  us  country  folk, 
because  he  was  occasionally  visited  by  the  then  Prince  George 
of  Cambridge.  I  remember  turning  my  pinafore  wrong  side 
forwards  in  order  to  represent  a  surplice,  and  preaching  to  my 
mother's  maids  in  the  kitchen  as  nearly  as  possible  in  Sir  Her- 
bert's manner  one  Sunday  morning  when  the  rest  of  the  family 
were  at  church.  That  is  the  earliest  indication  of  the  strong 
clerical  affinities  which  my  friend  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has 
always  ascribed  to  me,  though  I  fancy  they  have  for  the  most 
part  remained  in  a  latent  state. 

There  remains  no  record  of  his  having  been  a  very  pre- 
cocious child.  Indeed,  it  is  usually  the  eldest  child  whose 
necessary  companionship  with  his  elders  wins  him  this 
reputation.  The  youngest  remains  a  child  among  children 
longer  than  any  other  of  his  brothers  and  sisters. 

One  talent,  however,  displayed  itself  early.  The  faculty 
of  drawing  he  inherited  from  his  father.  But  on  the  queer 
principle  that  training  is  either  unnecessary  to  natural  ca- 
pacity or  even  ruins  it,  he  never  received  regular  instruction 


i833  SCHOOLING  5 

in  drawing;  and  his  draughtsmanship,  vigorous  as  it  was, 
and  a  genuine  medium  of  artistic  expression  as  well  as  an 
admirable  instrument  in  his  own  especial  work,  never 
reached  the  technical  perfection  of  which  it  was  naturally 
capable. 

The  amount  of  instruction,  indeed  of  any  kind,  which 
he  received  was  scanty  in  the  extreme.  For  a  couple  of 
years,  from  the  age  of  eight  to  ten,  he  was  given  a  taste  of 
the  unreformed  public  school  life,  where,  apart  from  the 
rough  and  ready  mode  of  instruction  in  vogue  and  the 
necessary  obedience  enforced  to  certain  rules,  no  means 
were  taken  to  reach  the  boys  themselves,  to  guide  them  and 
help  them  in  their  school  life.  The  new-comer  was  left  to 
struggle  for  himself  in  a  community  composed  of  human 
beings  at  their  most  heartlessly  cruel  age,  untempered  by 
any  external  influence. 

Here  he  had  little  enough  of  mental  discipline,  or  that 
deliberate  training  of  character  which  is  a  leading  object  of 
modern  education.  On  the  contrary,  what  he  learnt  was  a 
knowledge  of  undisciplined  human  nature. 

My  regular  school  training  (he  tells  us),  was  of  the  briefest, 
perhaps  fortunately;  for  though  my  way  of  life  has  made  me 
acquainted  with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  from  the  high- 
est to  the  lowest,  I  deliberately  affirm  that  the  society  I  fell  into 
at  school  was  the  worst  I  have  ever  known.  We  boys  were 
average  lads,  with  much  the  same  inherent  capacity  for  good  and 
evil  as  any  others;  but  the  people  who  were  set  over  us  cared 
about  as  much  for  our  intellectual  and  moral  welfare  as  if  they 
were  baby-farmers.  We  were  left  to  the  operation  of  the  strug- 
gle for  existence  among  ourselves ;  bullying  was  the  least  of  the 
ill  practices  current  among  us.  Almost  the  only  cheerful  remi- 
niscence in  connection  with  the  place  which  arises  in  my  mind 
is  that  of  a  battle  I  had  with  one  of  my  classmates,  who  had 
bullied  me  until  I  could  stand  it  no  longer.  I  was  a  very  slight 
lad,  but  there  was  a  wild-cat  element  in  me  which,  when  roused, 
made  up  for  lack  of  weight,  and  I  licked  my  adversary  effectu- 
ally. However,  one  of  my  first  experiences  of  the  extremely 
rough-and-ready  nature  of  justice,  as  exhibited  by  the  course  of 
things  in  general,  arose  out  of  the  fact  that  I — the  victor — had 
a  black  eye,  while  he — the  vanquished — ^had  none,  so  that  I  got 


6  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  i 

into  disgrace  and  he  did  not.  We  made  it  up,  and  thereafter  I 
was  unmolested.  One  of  the  greatest  shocks  I  ever  received  in 
my  life  was  to  be  told  a  dozen  years  afterwards  by  the  groom 
who  brought  me  my  horse  in  a  stable-yard  in  Sydney  that  he 
was  my  quondam  antagonist.  He  had  a  long  story  of  family 
misfortune  to  account  for  his  position;  but  at  that  time  it  was 
necessary  to  deal  very  cautiously  with  mysterious  strangers  in 
New  South  Wales,  and  on  inquiry  I  found  that  the  unfortunate 
young  man  had  not  only  been  "  sent  out,"  but  had  undergone 
more  than  one  colonial  conviction. 

His  brief  school  career  was  happily  cut  short  by  the 
break  up  of  the  Ealing  establishment.  On  the  death  of 
Dr.  Nicholas,  his  sons  attempted  to  carry  on  the  school ;  but 
the  numbers  declined  rapidly,  and  George  Huxley,  about 
1835,  returned  to  his  native  town  of  Coventry,  where  he 
obtained  the  modest  post  of  manager  of  the  Coventry  sav- 
ings bank,  while  his  daughters  eked  out  the  slender  family 
resources  by  keeping  school. 

In  the  meantime  the  boy  Tom,  as  he  was  usually  called, 
got  little  or  no  regular  instruction.  But  he  had  an  inquiring 
mind,  and  a  singularly  early  turn  for  metaphysical  specula- 
tion. He  read  everything  he  could  lay  hands  on  in  his 
father's  library.  Not  satisfied  with  the  ordinary  length  of 
the  day,  he  used,  when  a  boy  of  twelve,  to  light  his  candle 
before  dawn,  pin  a  blanket  round  his  shoulders,  and  sit  up 
in  bed  to  read  Hutton's  Geology.  He  discussed  all  manner 
of  questions  with  his  parents  and  friends,  for  his  quick  and 
eager  mind  made  it  possible  for  him  to  have  friendships 
with  people  considerably  older  than  himself.  Among  these 
may  especially  be  noted  his  medical  brother-in-law,  Dr. 
Cooke  of  Coventry,  who  had  married  his  sister  Ellen  in 
1839,  and  through  whom  he  early  became  interested  in  hu- 
man anatomy ;  and  George  Anderson  May,  at  that  time  in 
business  at  Hinckley  (a  small  weaving  centre  some  dozen 
miles  distant  from  Coventry),  whom  his  friends  who  knew 
him  afterwards  in  the  home  which  he  made  for  himself  on 
the  farm  at  Elford,  near  Tamworth,  will  remember  for  his 
genial  spirit  and  native  love  of  letters.  There  was  a  real 
friendship  between  the  two.    The  boy  of  fifteen  notes  down 


1838  EARLY   PURSUITS  7 

with  pleasure  his  visits  to  the  man  of  six-and-twenty,  with 
whom  he  could  talk  freely  of  the  books  he  read,  and  the 
ideas  he  gathered  about  philosophy. 

Afterwards,  however,  their  ways  lay  far  apart,  and  I 
believe  they  did  not  meet  again  until  the  seventies,  when 
Mr.  May  sent  his  children  to  be  educated  in  London,  and 
his  youngest  son  was  at  school  with  me;  his  younger 
daughter  studied  art  at  the  Slade  School  with  my  sisters, 
and  both  found  a  warm  welcome  in  the  home  circle  at 
Marlborough  Place. 

One  of  his  boyish  speculations  was  as  to  what  would 
become  of  things  if  their  qualities  were  taken  away;  and 
lighting  upon  Sir  William  Hamilton's  LogiCf  he  devoured  it 
to  such  good  effect  that  when,  years  afterwards,  he  came  to 
tackle  the  greater  philosophers,  especially  the  English  and 
the  German,  he  found  he  had  already  a  clear  notion  of  where 
the  key  of  metaphysic  lay. 

This  early  interest  in  metaphysics  was  another  form  of 
the  intense  curiosity  to  discover  the  motive  principle  of 
things,  the  why  and  how  they  act,  that  appeared  in  the 
boy's  love  of  engineering  and  of  anatomy.  The  unity  of 
this  motive  and  the  accident  which  bade  fair  to  ruin  his  life 
at  the  outset,  and  actually  levied  a  lifelong  tax  upon  his 
bodily  vigour,  are  best  told  in  his  own  words : — 

As  I  grew  older,  my  great  desire  was  to  be  a  mechanical 
engineer,  but  the  fates  were  against  this,  and  while  very  young  I 
commenced  the  study  of  medicine  under  a  medical  brodier-in- 
law.  But,  though  the  Institute  of  Mechanical  Engineers  would 
certainly  not  own  me,  I  am  not  sure  that  I  have  not  all  along 
been  a  sort  of  mechanical  engineer  in  partibus  inMelium.  I  am 
now  occasionally  horrified  to  think  how  little  I  ever  knew  or 
cared  about  medicine  as  the  art  of  healing.  The  only  part  of 
my  professional  course  which  really  and  deeply  interested  me 
was  physiology,  which  is  the  mechanical  engineering  of  living 
machines;  and,  notwithstanding  that  natural  science  has  been 
my  proper  business,  I  am  afraid  there  is  very  little  of  the  genu- 
ine naturalist  in  me.  I  never  collected  anything,  and  species 
work  was  always  a  burden  to  me;  what  I  cared  for  was  the 
architectural  and  engineering  part  of  the  business,  the  working 
out  the  wonderful  unity  of  plan  in  the  thousands  and  thousands 


8  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  i 

of  diverse  living  constructions,  and  the  modifications  of  similar 
apparatuses  to  serve  diverse  ends.  The  extraordinary  attrac- 
tion I  felt  towards  the  study  of  the  intricacies  of  living  struc- 
ture nearly  proved  fatal  to  me  at  the  outset,  I  was  a  mere  boy 
— I  think  between  thirteen  and  fourteen  years  of  age — when  I 
was  taken  by  some  older  student  friends  of  mine  to  the  first 
post-mortem  examination  I  ever  attended.  All  my  life  I  have 
been  most  unfortunately  sensitive  to  the  disagreeables  which 
attend  anatomical  pursuits,  but  on  this  occasion  my  curiosity 
overpowered  all  other  feelings,  and  I  spent  two  or  three  hours 
in  gratifying  it.  I  did  not  cut  myself,  and  none  of  the  ordinary 
symptoms  of  dissection-poison  supervened,  but  poisoned  I  was 
somehow,  and  I  remember  sinking  into  a  strange  state  of  apathy. 
By  way  of  a  last  chance,  I  was  sent  to  the  care  of  some  good, 
kind  people,  friends  of  my  father's,  who  lived  in  a  farmhouse 
in  the  heart  of  Warwickshire.  I  remember  staggering  from  my 
bed  to  the  window  on  the  bright  spring  morning  after  my 
arrival,  and  throwing  open  the  casement.  Life  seemed  to  come 
back  on  the  wings  of  the  breeze,  and  to  this  day  the  faint  odour 
of  wood-smoke,  like  that  which  floated  across  the  farmyard  in 
the  early  morning,  is  as  good  to  me  as  the  "  sweet  south  upon  a 
bed  of  violets."  I  soon  recovered,  but  for  years  I  suffered  from 
occasional  paroxysms  of  internal  pain,  and  from  that  time  my 
constant  friend,  hypochondriacal  dyspepsia,  commenced  his  half- 
century  of  co-tenancy  of  my  fleshly  tabernacle. 

Some  little  time  after  his  return  from  the  voyage  of  the 
Rattlesnake,  Huxley  succeeded  in  tracing  his  good  Warwick- 
shire friends  again.  A  letter  of  May  ii,  1852,  from  one 
of  them,  Miss  K.  Jaggard,  tells  how  they  had  lost  sight  of 
the  Huxleys  after  their  departure  from  Coventry ;  how  they 
were  themselves  dispersed  by  death,  marriage,  or  retire- 
ment ;  and  then  proceeds  to  draw  a  lively  sketch  of  the  long 
delicate-looking  lad,  which  clearly  refers  to  this  period  or 
a  little  later. 

My  brother  and  sister  who  were  living  at  Grove  Fields  when 
you  visited  there,  have  now  retired  from  the  cares  of  business, 
and  are  living  very  comfortably  at  Leamington.  ...  I  suppose 
you  remember  Mr.  Joseph  Russell,  who  used  to  live  at  Avon 
Dassett.  He  is  now  married  and  gone  to  live  at  Grove  Fields, 
so  that  it  is  still  occupied  by  a  person  of  the  same  name  as  when 
you  knew  it.    But  it  is  very  much  altered  in  appearance  since 


i840  INFLUENCE  OF  CARLYLE  g 

the  time  when  such  merry  and  joyous  parties  of  aunts  and 
cousins  used  to  assemble  there.  I  assure  you  we  have  often 
talked  of  "Tom  Huxley"  (who  was  sometimes  one  of  the 
party)  looking  so  thin  and  ill,  and  pretending  to  make  hay  with 
one  hand,  while  in  the  other  he  held  a  German  book !  Do  you 
remember  it?  And  the  picnic  at  Scar  Bank  ?  And  how  often  too 
your  patience  was  put  to  the  test  in  looking  for  your  German 
books  which  had  been  hidden  by  some  of  those  playful  compan- 
ions who  were  rather  less  inclined  for  learning  than  yourself? 

It  is  interesting  to  see  from  this  letter  and  from  a  journal, 
to  be  quoted  hereafter,  that  he  had  thus  early  begun  to 
teach  himself  German,  an  undertaking  more  momentous  in 
its  consequences  than  the  boy  dreamed  of.  The  knowledge 
of  German  thus  early  acquired  was  soon  of  the  utmost  serv- 
ice in  making  him  acquainted  with  the  advance  of  biological 
investigation  on  the  continent  at  a  time  when  few  indeed 
among  English  men  of  science  were  able  to  follow  it  at  first 
hand,  and  turn  the  light  of  the  newest  theories  upon  their 
own  researches. 

It  is  therefore  peculiarly  interesting  to  note  the  cause 
which  determined  the  young  Huxley  to  take  up  the  study  of 
so  little  read  a  language.  I  have  more  than  once  heard  him 
say  that  this  was  one  half  of  the  debt  he  owed  to  Carlyle, 
the  other  half  being  an  intense  hatred  of  shams  of  every  sort 
and  kind.  The  translations  from  the  German,  the  constant 
references  to  German  literature  and  philosophy,  fired  him  to 
try  the  vast  original  from  which  these  specimens  were  quar- 
ried, for  the  sake  partly  of  the  literature,  but  still  more  of 
the  philosophy.  The  translation  of  Wilhelm  Meister,  and 
some  of  the  Miscellaneous  Essays  together,  with  The  French 
Revolution,  were  certainly  among  works  of  Carlyle  with 
which  he  first  made  acquaintance,  to  be  followed  later  by 
Sartor  Resartus,  which  for  many  years  afterwards  was  his 
Enchiridion,  as  he  puts  it  in  an  unpublished  autobiographi- 
cal fragment. 

By  great  good  fortune,  a  singularly  interesting  glimpse 
of  my  father's  life  from  the  age  of  fifteen  onwards  has  been 
preserved  in  the  shape  of  a  fragmentary  journal  which  he 
entitled,   German  fashion,   Thoughts  and  Doings.     Begun 


10  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  i 

on  September  29,  1840,  it  is  continued  for  a  couple  of  years, 
and  concludes  with  some  vigorous  annotations  in  1845, 
when  the  little  booklet  emerged  from  a  three  years'  oblivion 
at  the  bottom  of  an  old  desk.  Early  as  this  journal  is,  in  it 
the  boy  displays  three  habits  afterwards  characteristic  of 
the  man:  the  habit  of  noting  down  any  striking  thought 
or  saying  he  came  across  in  the  course  of  his  reading;  of 
speculating  on  the  causes  of  things  and  discussing  the  right 
and  wrong  of  existing  institutions ;  and  of  making  scientific 
experiments,  using  them  to  correct  his  theories. 

The  first  entry,  the  heading,  as  it  were,  and  keynote  of 
all  the  rest,  is  a  quotation  from  Novalis : — "  Philosophy  can 
bake  np  bread ;  but  it  can  prove  for  us  God,  freedom,  and 
immortality.  Which,  now,  is  more  practical.  Philosophy  or 
Economy?"  The  reference  here  given  is  to  a  German 
edition  of  Novalis,  so  that  it  seems  highly  probable  that  the 
boy  had  learnt  enough  of  the  language  to  translate  a  bit  for 
himself,  though,  as  appears  from  entries  in  1841,  he  had 
still  to  master  the  grammar  completely. 

In  science,  he  was  much  interested  in  electricity;  he 
makes  a  galvanic  battery  "  in  view  of  experiment  to  get 
crystallized  carbon.  Got  it  deposited,  but  not  crystallized." 
Other  experiments  and  theorizing  upon  them  are  recorded 
in  the  following  year.  Another  entry  showing  the  courage 
of  youth,  deserves  mention : — 

**  Oct.  5  (1840). — Began  speculating  on  the  cause  of 
colours  at  sunset.  Has  any  explanation  of  them  ever  been 
attempted  ?  "  which  is  supplemented  by  an  extract  "  from 
old  book." 

We  may  also  remark  the  early  note  of  Radicalism  and 
resistance  to  anything  savouring  of  injustice  or  oppression, 
together  with  the  naive  honesty  of  the  admission  that  his 
opinions  may  change  with  years. 

Oct.  25  (at  Hinckley). — Read  Dr.  S.  Smith  on  the  Divine 
Government. — Agree  with  him  partly. — I  should  say  that  a  gen- 
eral belief  in  his  doctrines  would  have  a  very  injurious  effect  on 
morals. 

Nov.  22. — .  .  .  Had  a  long  talk  with  my  mother  and  father 
about  the  right  to  make  Dissenters  pay  church  rates  —  and 


1841  EARLY  JOURNAL  II 

whether  there  ought  to  be  any  Establishment.  I  maintain  that 
there  ought  not  in  both  cases — I  wonder  what  will  be  my  opin- 
ion ten  years  hence  ?  I  think  now  that  it  is  against  all  laws  of 
justice  to  force  men  to  support  a  church  with  whose  opinions 
they  cannot  conscientiously  agree.  The  argument  that  the  rate 
is  so  small  is  very  fallacious.  It  is  as  much  a  sacrifice  of  prin- 
ciple to  do  a  little  wrong  as  to  do  a  great  one. 

Nov,  22  (Hinckley). — Had  a  long  argument  with  Mr.  May 
on  the  nature  of  the  soul  and  the  difference  between  it  and 
matter.  I  maintained  that  it  could  not  be  proved  that  matter  is 
essentially — as  to  its  base — different  from  soul.  Mr.  M.  wittily 
said,  soul  was  the  perspiration  of  matter. 

We  cannot  find  the  absolute  basis  of  matter :  we  only  know 
it  by  its  properties ;  neither  know  we  the  soul  in  any  other  way. 
Cogito  ergo  sum  is  the  only  thing  that  we  certainly  know. 

Why  may  not  soul  and  matter  be  of  the  same  substance  {i.e. 
basis  whereon  to  fix  qualities,  for  we  cannot  suppose  a  quality 
to  exist  per  se — ^it  must  have  a  something  to  qualify),  but  with 
different  qualities. 

Let  us  suppose  then  an  Eon — a  something  with  no  quality 
but  that  of  existence — this  Eon  endued  with  all  the  intelligence, 
mental  qualities,  and  that  in  the  highest  degree — is  God.  This 
combination  of  intelligence  with  existence  we  may  suppose  to 
have  existed  from  eternity.  At  the  creation  we  may  suppose 
that  a  portion  of  the  Eon  was  separated  from  the  intelligence,  and 
it  was  ordained — it  became  a  natural  law — ^that  it  should  have  the 
properties  of  gravitation,  etc. — ^that  is,  that  it  should  give  to 
man  the  ideas  of  those  properties.  The  Eon  in  this  state  is 
matter  in  the  abstract.  Matter,  then,  is  Eon  in  the  simplest 
form  in  which  it  possesses  qualities  appreciable  by  the  senses. 
Out  of  this  matter,  by  the  superimposition  of  fresh  qualities,  was 
made  all  things  that  are. 

1841 

Jan.  7. — Came  to  Rotherhithe.* 

June  20. — ^What  have  I  done  in  the  way  of  acquiring  knowl- 
edge since  January  ? 
Projects  begun — 

1.  German  )  .    .     1 

2.  Italian    } '"be  learnt. 

3.  To  read  MuUer's  Physiology. 

♦  See  Chap.  H. 


12  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  i 

4.  To  prepare   for  the   Matriculation   Examination  at 

London  University  which  requires  knowledge  of : — 

(a)  Algebra — Geometry  )  did  not  begin  to  read  for 

(b)  Natural  Philosophy  )      this  till  April 

(c)  Chemistry. 

(d)  Greek— Latin. 

(e)  English   History  down   to  end  of  seventeenth 

century. 
(/)  Ancient  History. 
English  Grammar. 

5.  To  make  copious  notes  of  all  things  I  read. 

Projects  completed — 

I.  Partly.    2.  Not  at  all.  •  3  and  5,  stuck  to  these  pretty 

closely. 
4.    (e)  Read  as  far  as  Henry  HL  in  Hume. 

(a)  Evolution  and  involution. 

(b)  Refraction  of  light — Polarisation  partly. 

(c)  Laws    of    combination — must    read    them    over 

again. 

(d)  Nothing. 
(/)  Nothing. 

I  must  get  on  faster  than  this.  I  must  adopt  a  fixed  plan  of 
studies,  for  unless  this  is  done  I  find  time  slips  away  without 
knowing  it — and  let  me  remember  this — ^that  it  is  better  to  read 
a  little  and  thoroughly,  than  cram  a  crude  undigested  mass  into 
my  head,  though  it  be  great  in  quantity. 

(This  is  about  the  only  resolution  I  have  ever  stuck  to— 

1845). 

[Well  do  I  remember  how  in  that  little  narrow  surgery  I 
used  to  work  morning  after  morning  and  evening  after  evening 
at  that  insufferably  dry  and  profitless  book,  Hume's  History, 
how  I  worked  against  hope  through  the  series  of  thefts,  rob- 
beries, and  throat-cutting  in  those  three  first  volumes,  and  how 
at  length  I  gave  up  the  task  in  utter  disgust  and  despair. 

Macintosh's  History,  on  the  other  hand,  I  remember  reading 
with  great  pleasure,  and  also  Guizot's  Civilisation  in  Europe,  the 
scientific  theoretical  form  of  the  latter  especially  pleased  me,  but 
the  want  of  sufficient  knowledge  to  test  his  conclusions  was  a 
great  drawback.    1845]. 

There  follow  notes  of  work  done  in  successive  weeks — 
June  20  to  August  9,  and  September  27  to  October  4. 


1842  EARLY  JOURNAL  1 3 

History, German,  Mathematics,  Physics,  Physiology;  makes 
an  electro-magnet ;  reads  Guizot's  History  of  Civilisation  in 
Europe,  on  which  he  remarks  "an  excellent  work — ^very 
tough  reading,  though." 

At  the  beginning  of  October,  under  "  Miscellaneous," 
"  Becsftne  acquainted  with  constitution  of  French  Chambre 
des  deputes  and  their  parties." 

It  was  his  practice  to  note  any  sayings  that  struck 
him: — 

Truths :  *'  I  hate  all  people  who  want  to  found  sects.  It  is 
not  error  but  sects — ^it  is  not  error  but  sectarian  error,  nay,  and 
even  sectarian  truth,  which  causes  the  unhappiness  of  man- 
kind."— ^Lessing. 

"  It  is  only  necessary  to  grow  old  to  become  more  indul- 
gent. I  see  no  fault  committed  that  I  have  not  committed 
myself.  .  .  ." — Goethe. 

"  One  solitary  philosopher  may  be  great,  virtuous,  and  happy 
in  the  midst  of  poverty,  but  not  a  whole  nation.  .  .  ." — Isaac 
Iselin. 

1842 

Jan,  30,  Sunday  evening. — I  have  for  some  time  been  pon- 
dering over  a  classification  of  knowledge.  My  scheme  is  to  divide 
all  knowledge  in  the  first  place  into  two  grand  divisions,  i.  Ob- 
jective— ^that  for  which  a  man  is  indebted  to  the  external  world ; 
and  2.  Subjective — ^that  which  he  has  acquired  or  may  acquire 
by  inward  contemplation. 

Subjective  Objective 

Metaphysics 


r 


Metaphys.  proper    Maths.   Logic    Theology    Morality    Hist.   Physiology    Physics 

Metaphysics  comes  immediately,  of  course,  under  the  first 
(2)  head— that  is  to  say,  the  relations  of  the  mind  to  itself; 
of  this  Mathematics  and  Logic,  together  with  Theology,  are 
branches. 

I  am  in  doubt  under  which  head  to  put  morality,  for  I  can- 
not determine  exactly  in  my  own  mind  whether  morality  can 
exist  independent  of  others,  whether  the  idea  of  morality  could 
ever  have  arisen  in  the  mind  of  an  isolated  being  or  not.  I  am 
rather  inclined  to  the  opinion  that  it  is  objective. 


14  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  i 

Under  the  head  of  objective  knowledge  comes  first  Physics, 
including  the  whole  body  of  the  relations  of  inanimate  unorgan- 
ised bodies;  secondly,  Physiology.  Including  the  structure  and 
functions  of  animal  bodies,  including  language  and  Psychology ; 
thirdly  comes  History. 

One  object  for  which  I  have  attempted  to  form  an  arrange- 
ment of  knowledge  is  that  I  may  test  the  amount  of  my  own 
acquirements.  I  shall  form  an  extensive  list  of.  subjects  on  this 
plan,  and  as  I  acquire  any  one  of  them  I  shall  strike  it  out  of  the 
list.  May  the  list  soon  get  black  I  though  at  present  I  shall 
hardly  be  able,  I  am  afraid,  to  spot  the  paper. 

(A  prophecy !  a  prophecy,  1845  0- 

April  1842  introduces  a  number  of  quotations  from 
Carlyle's  Miscellaneous  Writings,  "  Characteristics,"  some 
clear  and  crisp,  others  sinking  into  Carlyle's  own  vein  of 
speculative  mysticism,  e.g. 

"  In  the  mind  as  in  the  body  the  sign  of  health  is  uncon- 
sciousness." 

"  Of  our  thinking  it  is  but  the  upper  surface  that  we  shape 
into  articulate  thought;  underneath  ttic  region  of  argument  and 
coMScious  discourse  lies  the  region  of  meditation." 

"Genius  is  ev^r  a  secret  to  itself." 

"  The  healthy  understanding,  we  should  say,  is  neither  the 
argumentative  nor  the  Logical,  but  the  Intuitive,  for  the  end  of 
understanding  is  not  to  prove  and  find  reasons  but  to  know  and 
believe  "(I) 

"The  ages  of  heroism  are  not  ages  of  Moral  Philosophy. 
Virtue,  when  it  is  philosophised  of,  has  become  aware  of  itself, 
is  sickly  and  beginning  to  decline." 

At  the  same  time  more  electrical  experiments  are  re- 
corded; and  theories  are  advanced  with  pros  and  cons  to 
account  for  the  facts  observed. 

The  last  entry  was  made  three  years  later — 

Oct,  1845. — I  have  found  singular  pleasure — having  acci- 
dentally raked  this  Biichlein  from  a  comer  of  my  desk — ^in  look- 
ing over  these  scraps  of  notices  of  my  past  existence ;  an  illus- 
tration of  J.  Paul's  saying  that  a  man  has  but  to  write  down  his 
yesterday's  doings,  and  forthwith  they  appear  surrounded  with 
a  poetic  halo. 

But  after  all,  these  are  but  the  top  skimmings  of  these  five 


1845  EARLY  JOURNAL  15 

years*  living.  I  hardly  care  to  look  back  into  the  seething 
depths  of  the  working  and  boiling  mass  that  lay  beneath  all  this 
froth,  and  indeed  I  hardly  know  whether  I  could  give  myself 
any  clear  account  of  it  Remembrances  of  physical  and  mental 
pain  .  .  .  absence  of  sympathy,  and  thence  a  choking  up  of 
such  few  ideas  as  I  did  form  clearly  within  my  own  mind. 

Grief  too,  yet  at  the  misfortune  of  others,  for  I  have  had  few 
properly  my  own;  so  much  the  worse,  for  in  that  case  I  might 
have  said  or  done  somewhat,  but  here  was  powerless. 

Oh,  Tom,  trouble  not  thyself  about  sympathy ;  thou  hast  two 
stout  legs  and  young,  wherefore  need  a  staff? 

Furthermore,  it  is  twenty  minutes  past  two,  and  time  to  go 
to  bed. 

Biichlein,  it  will  be  long  before  my  secretiveness  remains  so 
quiet  again ;  make  the  most  of  what  thou  hast  got. 


CHAPTER   II 

1841-1846 

The  migration  to  Rotherhithe,  noted  under  date  of  Janu- 
ary 9,  1841,  was  a  fresh  step  in  his  careen  In  1839  both  his 
sisters  married,  and  both  married  doctors.  Dr.  Cooke,  the 
husband  of  the  elder  sister,  who  was  settled  in  Coventry, 
had  begun  to  give  him  some  instruction  in  the  principles 
of  medicine  as  early  as  the  preceding  June.  It  was  now 
arranged  that  he  should  go  as  assistant  to  Mr.  Chandler,  of 
Rotherhithe,  a  practical  preliminary  to  walking  the  hospitals 
and  obtaining  a  medical  degree  in  London.  His  experi- 
ences among  the  poor  in  the  dock  region  of  the  East  of 
London — for  Dr.  Chandler  had  charge  of  the  parish — ^sup- 
plied him  with  a  grim  commentary  on  his  diligent  reading 
in  Carlyle.    Looking  back  on  this  period,  he  writes: — 

The  last  recorded  speech  of  Professor  Teufelsdrockh  pro- 
poses the  toast  *  Die  Sache  der  Armen  in  Gottes  und  Teufels- 

namen'  (The  cause  of  the  Poor  in  Heaven's  name  and *s.) 

The  cause  of  the  Poor  is  the  burden  of  Past  and  Present,  Chart- 
ism, and  Latter-Day  Pamphlets,  To  me  .  .  .  this  advocacy  of 
the  cause  of  the  poor  appealed  very  strongly  .  .  .  because  .  .  . 
I  had  had  the  opportunity  of  seeing  for  myself  something  of 
the  way  the  poor  live.  Not  much,  indeed,  but  still  enough  to 
give  a  terrible  foundation  of  real  knowledge  to  my  speculations. 

After  telling  how  he  came  to  know  something  of  the 
East  End,  he  proceeds : — 

I  saw  strange  things  there — among  the  rest,  people  who 
came  to  me  for  medical  aid,  and  who  were  really  suffering  from 
nothing  but  slow  starvation.     I  have  not  forgotten — am  not 
16 


1842  AMONG  THE  POOR  IN   EAST  END  17 

likely  to  forget  so  long  as  memory  holds — ^a  visit  to  a  sick  girl 
in  a  wretched  garret  where  two  or  three  other  women,  one  a 
deformed  woman,  sister  of  my  patient,  were  busy  shirt-making. 
After  due  examination,  even  my  small  medical  knowledge  suf- 
ficed to  show  that  my  patient  was  merely  in  want  of  some  better 
food  than  iht  bread  and  bad  tea  on  which  these  people  were 
living.  I  said  so  as  gently  as  I  could,  and  the  sister  turned 
upon  me  with  a  kind  of  choking  passion.  Pulling  out  of  her 
pocket  a  few  pence  and  halfpence,  and  holding  them  out,  '*  That 
is  all  I  get  for  six  and  thirty  hours'  work,  and  you  talk  about 
giving  her  proper  food." 

Well,  I  left  that  to  pursue  my  medical  studies,  and  it  so  hap- 
pened the  shortest  way  between  the  school  which  I  attended 
and  the  library  of  the  College  of  Surgeons,  where  my  spare 
hours  were  largely  spent,  lay  through  certain  courts  and  alleys, 
Vinegar  Yard  and  others,  which  are  now  nothing  like  what  they 
were  then.  Nobody  would  have  found  robbing  me  a  profitable 
employment  in  those  days,  and  I  used  to  walk  through  these 
wretched  dens  without  let  or  hindrance.  Alleys  nine  or  ten  feet 
wide,  I  suppose,  with  tall  houses  full  of  squalid  drunken  men 
and  women,  and  the  pavement  strewed  with  still  more  squalid 
children.  The  place  of  air  was  taken  by  a  steam  of  filthy  ex- 
halations; and  the  only  relief  to  the  general  dull  apathy  was  a 
roar  of  words — filthy  and  brutal  beyond  imagination — ^between 
the  closed-packed  neighbours,  occasionally  ending  in  a  general 
row.  All  this  almost  within  hearing  of  the  traffic  of  the  Strand, 
within  easy  reach  of  the  wealth  and  plenty  of  the  city. 

I  used  to  wonder  sometimes  why  these  people  did  not  sally 
forth  in  mass  and  get  a  few  hours'  eating  and  drinking  and 
plunder  to  their  hearts*  content,  before  the  police  could  stop 
and  hang  a  few  of  them.  But  the  poor  wretches  had  not  the 
heart  even  for  that.  As  a  slight,  wiry  Liverpool  detective  once 
said  to  me  when  I  asked  him  how  it  was  he  managed  to  deal 
with  such  hulking  ruffians  as  we  were  among,  "  Lord  bless  you, 
sir,  drink  and  disease  leave  nothing  in  them." 

This  early  contact  with  the  sternest  facts  of  the  social 
problem  impressed  him  profoundly.  And  though  not  ac- 
tively employed  in  what  is  generally  called  "  philanthropy," 
still  he  did  his  part,  hopefully  but  soberly,  not  only  to 
throw  light  on  the  true  issues  and  to  strip  away  make- 
believe  from  them,  but  also  to  bring  knowledge  to  the 
working  classes,  and  to  institute  machinery  by  which  ca- 


1 8  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  ii 

pacity  should  be  caught  and  led  to  a  position  where  it  might 
be  useful  instead  of  dangerous  to  social  order. 

After  some  time,  however,  he  left  Mr.  Chandler  to  join 
his  second  brother-in-law,*  who  had  set  up  in  the  north  of 
London,  and  to  whom  he  was  duly  apprenticed,  as  his 
brother  James  had  been  before  him.  This  change  gave  him 
more  time  and  opportunity  to  pursue  his  medical  education. 
He  attended  lectures  at  the  Sydenham  College,  and,  as  has 
been  seen,  began  to  prepare  for  the  matriculation  examina- 
tion of  the  University  of  London.  At  the  Sydenham  Col- 
lege he  met  with  no  little  success,  winning,  besides  certifi- 
cates of  merit  in  other  departments,  a  prize — his  first  prize 
— for  botany.  His  vivid  recollections,  given  below,  of  this 
entry  into  the  scientific  arena  are  taken  from  a  journal  he 
kept  for  his  fiancee  during  his  absence  from  Sydney  on  the 
cruises  of  the  Rattlesnake, 

On  Board  H. M.S.  Rattlesnake,  Christmas  1847. 

Next  summer  it  will  be  six  years  since  I  made  my  first  trial 
in  the  world.  My  first  public  competition,  small  as  it  was,  was 
an  epoch  in  my  life.  I  had  been  attending  (it  was  my  first  sum- 
mer session)  the  botanical  lectures  at  Chelsea.  One  morning  I 
observed  a  notice  stuck  up — ^a  notice  of  a  public  competition  for 
medals,  etc.,  to  take  place  on  the  ist  August  (if  I  recollect  right). 
It  was  then  the  end  of  May  or  thereabouts.  I  remember  looking 
longingly  at  the  notice,  and  some  one  said  to  me,  "  Why  don't 
you  go  in  and  try  for  it  ?  "  I  laughed  at  the  idea,  for  I  was  very 
young,  and  my  knowledge  somewhat  of  the  vaguest.  Neverthe- 
less I  mentioned  the  matter  to  S.f  when  I  returned  home.  He 
likewise  advised  me  to  try,  and  so  I  determined  I  would.  I  set 
to  work  in  earnest,  and  perseveringly  applied  myself  to  such 
works  as  I  could  lay  my  hands  on,  Lindlcy's  and  Decandolle's 
Systems  and  the  Annates  des  Sciences  Naturelles  in  the  British 
Museum.  I  tried  to  read  Schleiden,  but  my  German  was  insuf- 
ficient. 

For  a  young  hand  I  worked  really  hard  from  eight  or  nine 
in  the  morning  until  twelve  at  night,  besides  a  long  hot  sum- 
mer's walk  over  to  Chelsea  two  or  three  times  a  week  to  hear 
Lindley.    A  great  part  of  the  time  I  worked  till  sunrise.    The 

♦  John  Godwin  Scott.  t  His  brother-in-law. 


1843  HIS  FIRST   SUCCESS  19 

result  was  a  sort  of  ophthalmia  which  kept  me  from  reading  at 
night  for  months  afterwards. 

The  day  of  examination  came,  and  as  I  went  along  the  pas- 
sage to  go  out  I  well  remember  dear  Lizzie,*  half  in  jest,  half 
in  earnest,  throwing  her  shoe  after  me,  as  she  said,  for  luck. 
She  was  alone,  beside  S.,  in  the  secret,  and  almost  as  anxious 
as  I  was.  How  I  reached  the  examination  room  I  hardly  know, 
but  I  recollect  finding  myself  at  last  with  pen  and  ink  and  paper 
before  me  and  five  other  beings,  all  older  than  myself,  at  a  long 
table.  We  stared  at  one  another  like  strange  cats  in  a  garret, 
but  at  length  the  examiner  (Ward)  entered,  and  before  each 
was  placed  the  paper  of  questions  and  sundry  plants.  I  looked 
at  my  questions,  but  for  some  moments  could  hardly  hold  my 
pen,  so  extreme  was  my  nervousness;  but  when  I  once  fairly 
began,  my  ideas  crowded  upon  me  almost  faster  than  I  could 
write  them.  And  so  we  all  sat,  nothing  heard  but  the  scratching 
of  the  pens  and  the  occasional  crackle  of  the  examiner's  Times 
as  he  quietly  looked  over  the  news  of  the  day. 

The  examination  began  at  eleven.  At  two  they  brought  in 
lunch.  It  was  a  good  meal  enough,  but  the  circumstances  were 
not  particularly  favourable  to  enjo3rment,  so  after  a  short  delay 
we  resumed  our  work.  It  began  to  be  evident  between  whom  the 
contest  lay,  and  the  others  determined  that  I  was  one  man's 
competitor  and  Stocks  f  (he  is  now  in  the  East  India  service) 
the  other.  Scratch,  scratch,  scratch  I  Four  o'clock  came,  the 
usual  hour  of  closing  the  examination,  but  Stocks  and  I  had  not 
half  done,  so  with  the  consent  of  the  others  we  petitioned  for  an 
extension.  The  examiner  was  willing  to  let  us  go  on  as  long  as 
we  liked.  Never  did  I  see  man  write  like  Stocks;  one  might 
have  taken  him  for  an  attorney's  clerk  writing  for  his  dinner. 
We  went  on.  I  had  finished  a  little  after  eight,  he  went  on  till 
near  nine,  and  then  we  had  tea  and  dispersed. 

Great  were  the  greetings  I  received  when  I  got  home,  where 
my  long  absence  had  caused  some  anxiety.  The  decision  would 
not  take  place  for  some  weeks,  and  many  were  the  speculations 
made  as  to  the  probabilities  of  success.  I  for  my  part  managed 
to  forget  all  about  it,  and  went  on  my  ordinary  avocations  with- 
out troubling  myself  more  than  I  could  possibly  help  about  it. 

♦  His  eldest  sister,  Mrs.  Scott. 

f  John  Ellerton  Stocks,  M.D.,  London,  distinguished  himself  as  a 
botanist  in  India.  He  travelled  and  collected  in  Beloochistan  and 
Scinde ;  died  1854. 


20  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  ii 

I  knew  too  well  my  own  deficiencies  to  have  been  either  sur- 
prised or  disappointed  at  failure,  and  I  made  a  point  of  shatter- 
ing all  involuntary  "'  castles  in  the  air  "  as  soon  as  possible.  My 
worst  anticipations  were  realised.  One  day  S.  came  to  me  with 
a  sorrowful  expression  of  countenance.  He  had  inquired  of  the 
Beadle  as  to  the  decision,  and  ascertained  on  the  latter's  au- 
thority that  all  the  successful  candidates  were  University  Col- 
lege men,  whereby,  of  course,  I  was  excluded  I  said,  "  Very 
well,  the  thing  was  not  to  be  helped,"  put  my  best  face  upon  the 
matter,  and  gave  up  all  thoughts  of  it  Lizzie,  too,  came  to  com- 
fort me,  and,  I  believe,  felt  it  more  than  I  did.  What  was  my 
surprise  on  returning  home  one  afternoon  to  find  myself  sud- 
denly seized,  and  the  whole  female  household  vehemently  insist- 
ing on  kissing  me.  It  appeared  an  official-looking  letter  had 
arrived  for  me,  and  Lizzie,  as  I  did  not  appear,  could  not  re- 
strain herself  from  opening  it.  I  was  second,  and  was  to  re- 
ceive a  medal  *  ilccordingly,  and  dine  with  the  guild  on  the  9th 
November  to  have  it  bestowed. 

I  dined  with  the  company,  and  bore  my  share  in  both  pud- 
ding and  praise,  but  the  charm  of  success  lay  in  Lizzie's  warm 
congratulation  and  S3rmpathy.  Since  then  she  always  took  upon 
herself  to  prophesy  touching  the  future  fortunes  of  "  the  boy." 

The  haphazard,  unsystematic  nature  of  preliminary 
medical  study  here  presented  can  not  fail  to  strike  one  with 
wonder.  Thomas  Huxley  was  now  seventeen;  he  had  al- 
ready had  two  years'  "  practice  in  pharmacy  "  as  a  testi- 
monial put  it  After  a  similar  apprenticeship,  his  brother 
had  made  the  acquaintance  of  the  director  of  the  Gloucester 
Lunatic  Asylum,  and  was  given  by  him  the  post  of  dispenser 
or  "  apothecary,"  which  he  filled  so  satisfactorily  as  to  re- 
ceive a  promise  that  if  he  went  to  London  for  a  couple  of 
years  to  complete  his  medical  training,  a  substitute  should 

♦  Silver  Medal  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society,  9th  November  1842. 
Another  botanical  prize  is  a  book — La  Botaniqui^  by  A.  Richard — with 
the  following  inscription  : — 

Thomas  Huxley 

In  Exercitatione  Botanices 

Apud  Scholam  Collegii  Sydenhamiensis 

Optime  Merenti 

Hunc  librum  dono  dedit 

RiCARDUS  D.  HoBLVN,  Botanices  Professor. 


1842  AT  CHARING  CROSS   HOSPITAL  21 

be  appointed  meanwhile  to  keep  the  place  until  he  re- 
turned. 

The  opportunity  to  which  both  the  brothers  looked 
came  in  the  shape  of  the  Free  Scholarships  offered  by  the 
Charing  Cross  Hospital  to  students  whose  parents  were 
unable  to  pay  for  their  education.  Testimonials  as  to  the 
position  and  general  education  of  the  candidates  were  re- 
quired, and  It  is  curious  that  one  of  the  persons  applied 
to  by  the  elder  Huxley  was  J.  H.  Newman,  at  that  time 
Vicar  of  Littlemore,  who  had  been  educated  at  Dr.  Nicholas' 
School  at  Ealing. 

The  application  for  admission  to  the  lectures  and  other 
teaching  at  the  Hospital  states  of  the  young  T.  H.  Huxley 
that  "  He  has  a  fair  knowledge  of  Latin,  reads  French  with 
facility,  and  knows  something  of  German..  He  has  also 
made  considerable  progress  in  the  Mathematics,  having, 
as  far  as  he  has  advanced,  a  thorough  not  a  superficial 
knowledge  of  the  subject."  The  document  ends  in  the 
following  confident  words : — 

I  appeal  to  the  certificates  and  testimonials  that  will  be  here- 
with submitted  for  evidence  of  their  past  conduct,  offering  pro- 
spectively that  these  young  men,  if  elected  to  the  Free  Scholar- 
ships of  the  Charing  Cross  Hospital  and  Medical  College,  will 
be  diligent  students,  and  in  all  things  submit  themselves  to  the 
controul  and  guidance  of  the  Director  and  Medical  Officers  of 
the  establishment.  A  father  may  be  pardoned,  perhaps,  for  add- 
ing his  belief  that  these  young  men  will  hereafter  reflect  credit 
on  any  institution  from  which  they  may  receive  their  education. 

The  authorities  replied  that  "  although  it  is  not  usual  to 
receive  two  members  of  the  same  family  at  the  same  time, 
the  officers  taking  into  consideration  the  age  of  Mr.  Huxley, 
sen.,  the  numerous  and  satisfactory  testimonials  of  his  re- 
spectability, and  of  the  good  conduct  and  merits  of  the 
candidates,  have  decided  upon  admitting  Mr.  J.  E.  and  Mr. 
T.  Huxley  on  this  occasion." 

The  brothers  began  their  hospital  course  on  October  i, 
1842.  Here,  after  a  time,  my  father  seems  to  have  begun 
working  more  steadily  and  systematically  than  he  had  done 
before,  under  the  influence  of  a  really  good  teacher. 


22  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  ii 

Looking  back  (he  says)  on  my  "  Lehrjahre,"  I  am  sorry  to 
say  that  I  do  not  think  that  any  account  of  my  doings  as  a 
student  would  tend  to  edification.  In  fact,  I  should  distinctly 
warn  ingenuous  youth  to  avoid  imitating  my  example.  I  worked 
extremely  hard  when  it  pleased  me,  and  when  it  did  not,  which 
was  a  very  frequent  case,  I  was  extremely  idle  (unless  making 
caricatures  of  one's  pastors  and  masters  is  to  be  called  a  branch 
of  industry),  or  else  wasted  my  energies  in  wrong  directions.  I 
read  everything  I  could  lay  hands  upon,  including  novels,  and 
took  up  all  sorts  of  pursuits  to  drop  them  again  quite  as  speedily. 
No  doubt  it  was  very  largely  my  own  fault,  but  the  only  in- 
struction from  which  I  obtained  the  proper  effect  of  education 
was  that  which  I  received  from  Mr.  Wharton  Jones,  who  was 
the  lecturer  on  physiology  at  the  Charing  Cross  School  of  Medi- 
cine. The  extent  and  precision  of  his  knowledge  impressed 
me  greatly,  and  the  severe  exactness  of  his  method  of  lecturing 
was  quite  to  my  taste.  I  do  not  know  that  I  have  ever  felt  so 
much  respect  for  anybody  as  a  teacher  before  or  since.  I 
worked  hard  to  obtain  his  approbation,  and  he  was  extremely 
kind  and  helpful  to  the  youngster  who,  I  am  afraid,  took  up 
more  of  his  time  than  he  had  any  right  to  do.  It  was  he  who 
suggested  the  publication  of  my  first  scientific  paper — a  very 
little  one — in  the  Medical  Gazette  of  1845,  and  most  kindly  cor- 
rected the  literary  faults  which  abounded  in  it,  short  as  it  was ; 
for  at  that  time,  and  for  many  years  afterwards,  I  detested  the 
trouble  of  writing,  and  would  take  no  pains  with  it. 

He  never  forgot  his  debt  to  Wharton  Jones,  and  years 
afterwards  was  delighted  at  being  able  to  do  him  a  good 
turn,  by  helping  to  obtain  a  pension  for  him.  But  although 
in  retrospect  he  condemns  the  fitfulness  of  his  energies  and 
his  want  of  system,  which  left  much  to  be  learned  afterwards, 
which  might  with  advantage  have  been  learned  then,  still  it 
was  his  energy  that  struck  his  contemporaries.  I  have  a 
story  from  one  of  them  that  when  the  other  students  used 
to  go  out  into  the  court  of  the  hospital  after  lectures  were 
over,  they  would  invariably  catch  sight  of  young  Huxley's 
dark  head  at  a  certain  window  bent  over  a  microscope  while 
they  amused  themselves  outside.  The  constant  silhouette 
framed  in  the  outlines  of  the  window  tickled  the  fancy  of 
the  young  fellows,  and  a  wag  amongst  them  dubbed  it  with 
a  name  that  stuck,  "  The  Sign  of  the  Head  and  Microscope." 


1845-46  PERPETUAL   MOTION  23 

The  scientific  paper,  too,  which  he  mentions,  was  some- 
what remarkable  under  the  circumstances.  It  is  not  given 
to  every  medical  student  to  make  an  anatomical  discovery, 
even  a  small  one.  In  this  case  the  boy  of  nineteen,  in- 
vestigating things  for  himself,  found  a  hitherto  undiscovered 
membrane  in  the  root  of  the  human  hair,  which  received  the 
name  of  Huxley's  layer. 

Speculations,  too,  such  as  had  filled  his  mind  in  early 
boyhood,  still  haunted  his  thoughts.  In  one  of  his  letters 
from  the  Rattlesnake,  he  gives  an  account  of  how  he  was 
possessed  in  his  student  days  by  that  problem  which  has 
beset  so  many  a  strong  imagination,  the  problem  of  per- 
petual motion,  and  even  sought  an  interview  with  Faraday, 
whom  he  left  with  the  resolution  to  meet  the  great  man 
some  day  on  a  more  equal  footing. 

MarcA  1848. 

To-day,  ruminating  over  the  manifold  ins  and  outs  of  life  in 
general,  and  my  own  in  particular,  it  came  into  my  head  sud- 
denly that  I  would  write  down  my  interview  with  Faraday — 
how  many  years  ago?  Aye,  there's  the  rub,  for  I  have  com- 
pletely forgotten.  However,  it  must  have  been  in  either  my 
first  or  second  winter  session  at  Charing  Cross,  and  it  was  be- 
fore Christmas  I  feel  sure. 

I  remember  how  my  long  brooding  perpetual  motion  scheme 
(which  I  had  made  more  than  one  attempt  to  realise,  but  failed 
owing  to  insufllicient  mechanical  dexterity)  had  been  working 
upon  me,  depriving  me  of  rest  even,  and  heating  my  brain  with 
chateaux  d'Espagne  of  endless  variety.  I  remember,  too,  it 
was  Sunday  morning  when  I  determined  to  put  the  questions, 
which  neither  my  wits  nor  my  hands  would  set  at  rest,  into  some 
hands  for  decision,  and  I  determined  to  go  before  some  tribunal 
from  whence  appeal  should  be  absurd. 

But  to  whom  to  go  ?  I  knew  no  one  among  the  high  priests 
of  science,  and  going  about  with  a  scheme  for  perpetual  motion 
was,  I  knew,  for  most  people  the  same  thing  as  courting  ridicule 
among  high  and  low.  After  all  I  fixed  upon  Faraday,  possibly 
perhaps  because  I  knew  where  he  was  to  be  found,  but  in  part 
also  because  the  cool  logic  of  his  works  made  me  hope  that  my 
poor  scheme  would  be  treated  on  some  other  principle  than  that 
of  mere  previous  opinion  one  way  or  other.  Besides,  the  known 
courtesy  and  aflFability  of  the  man  encouraged  me.  So  I  wrote 
3 


24  LIFE   OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  ii 

a  letter,  drew  a  plan,  enclosed  the  two  in  an  envelope,  and 
tremblingly  betook  myself  on  the  following  afternoon  to  the 
Royal  Institution. 

"  Is  Dr.  Faraday  here  ?  "  said  I  to  the  porter.  "  No  sir,  he 
has  just  gone  out."  I  felt  relieved.  "  Be  good  enough  to  give 
him  this  letter,"  and  I  was  hurrying  out  when  a  little  man  in  a 
brown  coat  came  in  at  the  glass  door.  "  Here  is  Dr.  Faraday," 
said  the  man,  and  gave  him  my  letter.  He  turned  to  me  and 
courteously  inquired  what  I  wished.  "  To  submit  to  you  that 
letter,  sir,  if  you  are  not  occupied."  "  My  time  is  always  occu- 
pied, sir,  but  step  this  way,"  and  he  led  me  into  the  museum  or 
library,  for  I  forget  which  it  was,  only  I  know  there  was  a  glass 
case  against  which  we  leant.  He  read  my  letter,  did  not  think 
my  plan  would  answer.  Was  I  acquainted  with  mechanism, 
what  we  call  the  laws  of  motion?  I  saw  all  was  up  with  my 
poor  scheme,  so  after  trying  a  little  to  explain,  in  the  course  of 
which  I  certainly  failed  in  giving  him  a  clear  idea  of  what  I 
would  be  at,  I  thanked  him  for  his  attention,  and  went  off  as 
dissatisfied  as  ever.  The  sense  of  one  part  of  the  conversation 
I  well  recollect.  He  said  "  that  were  the  perpetual  motion  pos- 
sible, it  would  have  occurred  spontaneously  in  nature,  and  would 
have  overpowered  all  other  forces,"  or  words  to  that  effect.  I 
did  not  see  the  force  of  this,  but  did  not  feel  competent  enough 
to  discuss  the  question. 

However,  all  this  exorcised  my  devil,  and  he  has  rarely  come 
to  trouble  me  since.  Some  future  day,  perhaps,  I  may  be  able  to 
call  Faraday's  attention  more  decidedly.  Perge  modo !  "  wie  das 
Gestim,  ohne  Hast,  ohne  Rast"  (Das  Gestirn  in  a  midshipman's 
berth!). 

In  other  respects  also  his  student's  career  was  a  brilliant 
one.  In  1843  he  won  the  first  chemical  prize,  the  certificate 
stating  that  his  **  extraordinary  diligence  and  success  in  the 
pursuit  of  this  branch  of  science  do  him  infinite  honour." 
At  the  same  time,  he  also  won  the  first  prize  in  the  class  of 
anatomy  and  physiology.  On  the  back  of  Wharton  Jones' 
certificate  is  scribbled  in  pencil :  "  Well,  'tis  no  matter. 
Honour  pricks  me  on.  Yea,  but  how  if  honour  prick  me 
off  when  I  come  on  ?    How  then  ?  " 

Finally,  in  1845  he  went  up  for  his  M.B.  at  London 
.  University,  and  won  a  gold  medal  for  anatomy  and  physi- 
ology, being  second  in  honours  in  that  section. 


1846  ENTERS   THE   NAVY  2$ 

Whatever  then  he  might  think  of  his  own  work,  judged 
by  his  own  standards,  he  had  done  well  enough  as  medical 
students  go.  But  a  brilliant  career  as  a  student  did  not  suf- 
fice to  start  him  in  life  or  provide  him  with  a  livelihood.  How 
he  came  to  enter  the  Navy  is  best  told  in  his  own  words. 

It  was  in  the  early  spring  of  1846,  that,  having  finished  my 
obligatory  medical  studies  and  passed  the  first  M.B.  examina- 
tion at  the  London  University,  though  I  was  still  too  young  to 
qualify  at  the  College  of  Surgeons,  I  was  talking  to  a  fellow- 
student  (the  present  eminent  physician.  Sir  Joseph  Fayrer), 
and  wondering  what  I  should  do  to  meet  the  imperative  neces- 
sity for  earning  my  own  bread,  when  my  friend  suggested  that 
I  should  write  to  Sir  William  Burnett,  at  that  time  Director- 
General  for  the  Medical  Service  of  the  Navy,  for  an  appoint- 
ment. I  thought  this  rather  a  strong  thing  to  do,  as  Sir  William 
was  personally  unknown  to  me,  but  my  cheery  friend  would  not 
listen  to  my  scruples,  so  I  went  to  my  lodgings  and  wrote  the 
best  letter  I  could  devise.  A  few  days  afterwards  I  received 
the  usual  official  circular  of  acknowledgment,  but  at  the  bottom 
there  was  written  an  instruction  to  call  at  Somerset  House  on 
such  a  day.  I  thought  that  looked  like  business,  so  at  the 
appointed  time  I  called  and  sent  in  my  card  while  I  waited  in 
Sir  William's  anteroom.  He  was  a  tall,  shrewd-looking  old 
gentleman,  with  a  broad  Scotch  accent,  and  I  think  I  see  him 
now  as  he  entered  with  my  card  in  his  hand.  The  first  thing  he 
did  was  to  return  it,  with  the  frugal  reminder  that  I  should 
probably  find  it  useful  on  some  other  occasion.  The  second  was 
to  ask  whether  I  was  an  Irishman.  I  suppose  the  air  of  modesty 
about  my  appeal  must  have  struck  him.  I  satisfied  the  Director- 
General  that  I  was  English  to  the  backbone,  and  he  made  some 
inquiries  as  to  my  student  career,  finally  desiring  me  to  hold 
myself  ready  for  examination.  Having  passed  this,  I  was  in 
Her  Majesty's  Service,  and  entered  on  the  books  of  Nelson's  old 
ship  the  Victory,  for  duty  at  Haslar  Hospital,  about  a  couple 
of  months  after  my  application. 

My  official  chief  at  Haslar  was  a  very  remarkable  person, 
the  late  Sir  John  Richardson,  an  excellent  naturalist  and  far- 
famed  as  an  indomitable  Arctic  traveller.  He  was  a  silent,  re- 
served man,  outside  the  circle  of  his  family  and  intimates ;  and 
having  a  full  share  of  youthful  vanity,  I  was  extremely  dis- 
gusted to  find  that  "  Old  John,"  as  we  irreverent  youngsters 
called  him,  took  not  the  slightest  notice  of  my  worshipful  self,  ' 


26  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  n 

either  the  first  time  I  attended  him,  as  it  was  my  duty  to  do,  or 
for  some  weeks  afterwards.  I  am  afraid  to  think  of  the  leng^s 
to  which  my  tongue  may  have  run  on  the  subject  of  the  churl- 
ishness of  the  chief,  who  was,  in  truth,  one  of  the  kindest- 
hearted  and  most  considerate  of  men.  But  one  day,  as  I  was 
crossing  the  hospital  square.  Sir  John  stopped  me  and  heaped 
coals  of  fire  on  my  head  by  telling  me  that  he  had  tried  to  get 
me  one  of  the  resident  appointments,  much  coveted  by  the  assist- 
ant-surgeons, but  that  die  Admiralty  had  put  in  another  man. 
"  However,"  said  he,  "  I  mean  to  keep  you  here  till  I  can  get 
you  something  you  will  like,"  and  turned  upon  his  heel  without 
waiting  for  the  thanks  I  stammered  out.  That  explained  how  it 
was  I  had  not  been  packed  off  to  the  West  Coast  of  Africa  like 
some  of  my  juniors,  and  why,  eventually,  I  remained  altogether 
seven  months  at  Haslar. 

After  a  long  interval,  during  which  "  Old  John  "  ignored  my 
existence  almost  as  completely  as  before,  he  stopped  me  again  as 
we  met  in  a  casual  way,  and  describing  the  service  on  which  the 
Rattlesnake  was  likely  to  be  employed,  said  that  Captain  Owen 
Stanley,  who  was  to  command  the  ship,  had  asked  him  to  recom- 
mend an  assistant  surgeon  who  knew  something  of  science; 
would  I  like  that  ?  Of  course  I  jumped  at  the  offer.  "  Very 
well,  I  give  you  leave ;  go  to  London  at  once  and  see  Captain 
Stanley."  I  went,  saw  my  future  commander,  who  was  very 
civil  to  me,  and  promised  to  ask  that  I  should  be  appointed  to 
his  ship,  as  in  due  time  I  was.  It  is  a  singular  thing  that  during 
the  few  months  of  my  stay  at  Haslar  I  had  among  my  mess- 
mates two  future  Directors-General  of  the  Medical  Service  of 
the  Navy  (Sir  Alexander  Armstrong  and  Sir  John  Watt-Reid), 
with  the  present  President  of  the  College  of  Physicians,  and 
my  kindest  of  doctors.  Sir  Andrew  Clark. 

A  letter  to  his  eldest  sister,  Lizzie,  dated  from  Haslar 
May  24,  1846,  shows  how  he  regarded  the  prospect  now 
opening  before  him. 

...  As  I  see  no  special  queries  in  your  letter,  I  think  I  shall 
go  on  to  tell  you  what  that  same  way  of  life  is  likely  to  be — ^my 
fortune  having  already  been  told  for  me  (  for  the  next  five  years 
at  least).  I  told  you  in  my  last  that  I  was  likely  to  have  a  perma- 
nency here.  Well,  I  was  recommended  by  Sir  John  Richardson, 
and  should  have  certainly  had  it,  had  not  (luckily)  the  Ad- 
miralty put  in  a  man  of  their  own.    Having  a  good  impudent 


1846  APPOINTMENT   TO  THE  RATTLESNAKE  27 

faith  in  my  own  star  (Wie  das  Gestirn,  ohne  Hast,  ohne  Rast), 
I  knew  this  was  only  because  I  was  to  have  something  better, 
and  so  it  turned  out;  for  a  day  or  two  after  I  was  ousted  from 
the  museum,  Sir  J.  Richardson  (who  has  shown  himself  for 
some  reason  or  another  a  special  good  friend  to  me)  told  me 
that  he  had  received  a  letter  from  Captain  Owen  Stanley,  who 
is  to  command  an  exploring  expedition  to  New  Guinea  (not 
coast  of  Africa,  mind),  requesting  him  to  recommend  an  assist- 
ant surgeon  for  this  expedition — ^would  I  like  the  appointment? 
As  you  may  imagine  I  was  delighted  at  the  offer,  and  immedi- 
ately accepted  it.  I  was  recommended  accordingly  ta  Captain 
Stanley  and  Sir  W.  Burnett,  and  I  shall  be  appointed  as  soon 
as  the  ship  is  in  commission.  We  are  to  have  the  Rattlesnake, 
a  28-gun  frigate,  and  as  she  will  fit  out  here  I  shall  have  no 
trouble.    We  sail  probably  in  September. 

New  Guinea,  as  you  may  be  aware,  is  a  place  almost  un- 
known, and  our  object  is  to  bring  back  a  full  account  of  its 
Geography,  Geology,  and  Natural  History.  In  the  latter  de- 
partment with  which  I  shall  have  (in  addition  to  my  medical 
functions)  somewhat  to  do,  we  shall  form  one  grand  collection 
of  specimens  and  deposit  it  in  the  British  Museum  or  some 
other  public  place,  and  this  main  object  being  always  kept  in 
view,  we  are  at  liberty  to  collect  and  work  for  ourselves  as  we 
please.  Depend  upon  it  unless  some  sudden  attack  of  laziness 
supervenes,  such  an  opportunity  shall  not  slip  unused  out  of 
my  hands.  The  great  difficulty  in  such  a  wide  field  is  to  choose 
an  object.  In  this  point,  however,  I  hope  to  be  greatly  assisted 
by  the  scientific  folks,  to  many  of  whom  I  have  already  had 
introductions  (Owen,  Gray,  Grant,  Forbes),  and  this,  I  assure 
you,  I  look  upon  as  by  no  means  the  least  of  the  advantages 
I  shall  derive  from  being  connected  with  the  expedition.  I  have 
been  twice  to  town  to  see  Captain  Stanley.  He  is  a  son  of  the 
Bishop  of  Norwich,  is  an  exceedingly  gentlemanly  man,  a  thor- 
ough scientific  enthusiast,  and  shows  himself  altogether  very 
much  disposed  to  forward  my  views  in  every  possible  way. 
Being  a  scientific  man  himself  he  will  take  care  to  have  the 
ship's  arrangements  as  far  as  possible  in  harmony  with  scientific 
pursuits — a  circumstance  you  would  appreciate  as  highly  as  I 
do  if  you  were  as  well  acquainted  as  I  now  am  with  the  ordinary 
opportunities  of  an  assistant  surgeon.  Furthermore,  I  am  given 
to  understand  that  if  one  does  anything  at  all,  promotion  is 
almost  certain.  So  that  altogether  I  am  in  a  very  fair  way, 
and  would  snap  my  fingers  at  the  Grand  Turk.    Wharton  Jones 


28  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  u 

was  delighted  when  I  told  him  about  my  appointment.  Dim 
visions  of  strangely  formed  corpuscles  seemed  to  cross  his  imagi- 
nation like  the  ghosts  of  the  kings  in  Macbeth. 

What  seems  his  head 
The  likeness  of  a  nucleated  cell  has  on. 

The  law's  delays  are  proverbial,  but  on  this  occasion,  as 
on  the  return  of  the  Rattlesnake,  the  Admiralty  seem  to 
have  been  almost  as  provoking  to  the  eager  young  surgeon 
as  any  lawyer  could  have  been.  The  appointment  was 
promised  in  May;  it  was  not  made  till  October.  On  the 
6th  of  that  month  there  is  another  letter  to  his  sister,  giving 
fuller  particulars  of  his  prospects  on  the  voyage : — 

My  dearest  Lizzie — At  last  I  have  really  got  my  appoint- 
ment and  joined  my  ship.  I  was  so  completely  disgusted  with 
the  many  delays  that  had  occurred  that  I  made  up  my  mind  not 
to  write  to  anybody  again  until  I  had  my  commission  in  my 
hand.  Henceforward,  like  another  Jonah,  my  dwelling-place 
will  be  the  "  inwards  "  of  the  Rattlesnake,  and  upon  the  whole 
I  really  doubt  whether  Jonah  was  much  worse  accommodated,  so 
far  as  room  goes,  than  myself.  My  total  length,  as  you  are  aware, 
is  considerable,  5  feet  11  inches,  possibly,  but  the  height  of  the 
lower  deck  of  the  Rattlesnake,  which  will  be  my  especial  loca- 
tion, is  at  the  outside  4  feet  10  inches.  What  I  am  to  do  with 
the  superfluous  foot  I  cannot  divine.  Happily,  however,  there 
is  a  sort  of  skylight  into  the  berth,  so  that  I  shall  be  able  to  sit 
with  the  body  in  it  and  my  head  out. 

Apart  from  joking,  however,  this  is  not  such  a  great  matter, 
and  it  is  the  only  thing  I  would  see  altered  in  the  whole  affair. 
The  officers,  as  far  as  I  have  seen  them,  are  a  very  gentlemanly, 
excellent  set  of  men,  and  considering  we  are  to  be  together  for 
four  or  five  years,  that  is  a  matter  of  no  small  importance.  I 
am  not  g^ven  to  be  sanguine,  but  I  confess  I  expect  a  good  deal 
to  arise  out  of  this  appointment.  In  the  first  place,  surveying  ' 
ships  are  totally  different  from  the  ordinary  run  of  men-of-war. 
The  requisite  discipline  is  kept  up,  but  not  in  the  martinet  style. 
Less  form  is  observed.  From  die  men  who  are  appointed  hav- 
ing more  or  less  scientific  turns,  they  have  more  respect  for 
one  another  than  that  given  by  mere  position  in  the  service, 
and  hence  that  position  is  less  taken  advantage  of.  They  are 
brought  more  into  contact,  and  hence  those  engaged  in  the  sur- 
veying service  almost  proverbially  stick  by  one  another.     To 


r846  PROSPECTS  OF  THE  VOYAGE  29 

me,  whose  interest  in  the  service  is  almost  all  to  be  made,  this 
is  a  matter  of  no  small  importance. 

Then  again,  in  a  surveying  ship  you  can  work.  In  an  ordi- 
nary frigate  if  a  fellow  has  the  talents  of  all  the  scientific  men 
from  Archimedes  downwards  compressed  into  his  own  peculiar 
skull  they  are  all  lost.  Even  if  it  were  possible  to  study  in  a 
midshipmen's  berth,  you  have  not  room  in  your  "chat"  for 
more  Uian  a  dozen  books.  But  in  the  Rattlesnake  the  whole 
poop  is  to  be  converted  into  a  large  chart-room  with  bookshelves 
and  tables  and  plenty  of  light  There  I  may  read,  draw,  or 
microscopise  at  pleasure,  and  as  to  books,  I  have  a  carte  blanche 
from  the  Captain  to  take  as  many  as  I  please,  of  which  permis- 
sion we  shall  avail  ourself — rather — and  besides  all  this,  from 
the  peculiar  way  in  which  I  obtained  this  appointment,  I  shall 
have  a  much  wider  swing  than  assistant  surgeons  in  general 
get  I  can  see  clearly  that  certain  branches  of  the  natural  his- 
tory work  will  fall  into  my  hands  if  I  manage  properly  through 
Sir  John  Richardson,  who  has  shown  himself  a  very  kind  friend 
all  diroughout,  and  also  through  Captain  Stanley  I  have  been 
introduced  to  several  eminent  zoologists — ^to  Owen  and  Gray 
and  Forbes  of  King's  College.  From  all  these  men  much  is  to  be 
learnt  which  becomes  peculiarly  my  own,  and  can  of  course  only 
be  used  and  applied  by  me.  From  Forbes  especially  I  have 
learned  and  shall  learn  much  with  respect  to  dredging  opera- 
tions (which  bear  on  many  of  the  most  interesting  points  of 
zoology).  In  consequence  of  this  I  may  very  likely  be  entrusted 
with  the  carrying  of  them  out,  and  all  that  is  so  much  the  more 
towards  my  opportunities.  Again,  I  have  learnt  the  calotype  pro- 
cess for  the  express  purpose  of  managing  the  calotype  apparatus, 
for  which  Captain  Stanley  has  applied  to  the  Government. 

And  having  once  for  all  enumerated  all  these  meaner  pros- 
pects of  mere  personal  advancement,  I  must  confess  I  do  glory  in 
the  prospect  of  being  able  to  g^ve  myself  up  to  my  own  favourite 
pursuits  without  thereby  neglecting  the  proper  duties  of  life. 
And  then  perhaps  by  the  following  of  my  favourite  motto— 

Wie  das  Gestirn, 
Ohne  Hast, 
Ohne  Rast— 

something  may  be  done,  and  some  of  Sister  Lizzie's  fond  imagi- 
nations turn  out  not  altogether  untrue. 

I  perceive  that  I  have  nearly  finished  a  dreadfully  egotistical 
letter,  but  I  know  you  like  to  hear  of  my  doings,  so  shall  not 


30 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  ii 


apologise.  Kind  regards  to  the  Doctor  and  kisses  to  the  babbies. 
Write  me  a  long  letter  all  about  yourselves. — Your  affect, 
brother,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

One  more  description  to  complete  the  sketch  of  his 
quarters  on  board  the  Rattlesnake.  It  is  from  a  letter  to 
his  mother,  written  at  Plymouth,  where  the  Rattlesnake  put 
in  after  leaving  Portsmouth.  The  comparison  with  the  ordi- 
nary quarters  of  an  assistant-surgeon,  and  the  shifts  to  which 
a  studious  man  might  be  put  in  his  endeavour  to  find  a  quiet 
spot  to  work  in,  have  a  flavour  of  Mr.  Midshipman  Easy 
about  them  to  relieve  the  deplorable  reality  of  his  situation : — 

You  will  be  very  glad  to  know  that  I  am  exceedingly  com- 
fortable here.  My  cabin  has  now  got  into  tolerable  order,  and 
what  with  my  books — ^which  are,  I  am  happy  to  say,  not  a  few 
— ^my  gay  curtain  and  the  spicy  oilcloth  which  will  be  down  on 
the  floor,  looks  most  respectable.  Furthermore,  although  it  is 
an  unquestionably  dull  day  I  have  sufficient  light  to  write  here, 
without  the  least  trouble,  to  read,  or  even  if  necessary,  to  use 
my  microscope.  I  went  to  see  a  friend  of  mine  on  board  the 
Recruit  the  other  day,  and  truly  I  hugged  myself  when  I  com- 
pared my  position  with  his.  The  berth  where  he  and  seven 
others  eat  their  daily  bread  is  hardly  bigger  than  my  cabin,  ex- 
cept in  height — and,  of  course,  he  has  to  sleep  in  a  hammock. 
My  friend  is  rather  an  eccentric  character,  and,  being  missed 
in  the  ship,  was  discovered  the  other  day  reading  in  the  main- 
top— ^the  only  place,  as  he  said,  sufficiently  retired  for  study. 
And  this  is  really  no  exaggeration.  If  I  had  no  cabin  I  should 
take  to  drinking  in  a  month. 

It  was  during  this  period  of  waiting  that  he  attended  his 
first  meeting  of  the  British  Association,  which  was  held  in 
1846  at  Southampton.  Here  he  obtained  from  Professor 
Edward  Forbes  one  of  his  living  specimens  of  Amphioxus 
lanceolatus,  and  made  an  examination  of  its  blood.  The 
result  was  a  short  paper  read  at  the  following  meeting  of 
the  Association,*  which  showed  that  in  the  composition  of 
its  blood  this  lowly  vertebrate  approached  very  near  the 
invertebrates. 

♦  *'  Examination  of  the  Corpuscles  of  the  Blood  of  Amphioxus  lan- 
ceolatus,"  British  Association  Report^  1847,  ii.  p.  95,  and  Sci.  Memoirs^  i. 


CHAPTER   III 

1846-1849 

It  is  a  curious  coincidence  that,  like  two  other  leaders  of 
science,  Charles  Darwin  and  Joseph  Dalton  Hooker,  their 
close  friend  Huxley  began  his  scientific  career  on  board  one 
of  Her  Majesty's  ships.  He  was,  however,  to  learn  how 
little  the  British  Government  of  that  day,  for  all  its  pro- 
fessions, really  cared  for  the  advancement  of  knowledge.* 
But  of  the  immense  value  to  himself  of  these  years  of  hard 
training,  the  discipline,  the  knowledge  of  men  and  of  the 
capabilities  of  life,  even  without  more  than  the  barest  ne- 
cessities of  existence— of  this  he  often  spoke.  As  he  puts 
it  in  his  Autobiography : — 

Life  on  board  Her  Majesty's  ships  in  those  days  was  a  very 
different  affair  from  what  it  is  now,  and  ours  was  exceptionally 
rough,  as  we  were  often  many  months  without  receiving  letters 
or  seeing  any  civilised  people  but  ourselves.  In  exchange,  we 
had  the  interest  of  being  about  the  last  voyagers,  I  suppose,  to 
whom  it  could  be  possible  to  meet  with  people  who  knew  noth- 

*  The  key  to  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  Admiralty  is  to  be 
found  in  the  scathing  description  in  Briggs'  Naval  Administration  from 
1827  to  i8g2,  p.  92,  of  the  ruinous  parsimony  of  either  political  party  at 
this  time  with  regard  to  the  navy — a  policy  the  results  of  which  were 
only  too  apparent  at  the  outbreak  of  the  Crimean  War.  I  quote  a 
couple  of  sentences,  '*  The  navy  estimates  were  framed  upon  the  lowest 
scale,  and  reduction  pushed  to  the  very  verge  of  danger.**  **  Even 
from  a  financial  point  of  view  the  course  pursued  was  the  reverse  of 
economical,  and  ultimately  led  to  wasteful  and  increased  expenditure.** 
Thus  the  liberal  professions  of  the  Admiralty  were  not  fulfilled ;  its 
goodwill  gave  the  young  surgeon  three  and  a  half  years  of  leave  from 
active  service ;  with  an  obdurate  treasury,  it  could  do  no  more. 

31 


32 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  m 


ing  of  firearms — ^as  we  did  on  the  south  coast  of  New  Guinea 
— ^and  of  making  acquaintance  with  a  variety  of  interesting 
savage  and  semi-civilised  people.  But,  apart  from  experience  of 
this  kind  and  the  opportunities  offered  for  scientific  work,  to  me, 
personally,  the  cruise  was  extremely  valuable.  It  was  good  for 
me  to  live  under  sharp  discipline;  to  be  down  on  the  realities 
of  existence  by  living  on  bare  necessaries :  to  find  how  extremely 
well  worth  living  life  seemed  to  be  when  one  woke  up  from  a 
night's  rest  on  a  soft  plank,  with  the  sky  for  canopy,  and  cocoa 
and  weevilly  biscuit  the  sole  prospect  for  breakfast;  and,  more 
especially,  to  learn  to  work  for  the  sake  of  what  I  got  for  myself 
out  of  it,  even  .if  it  all  went  to  the  bottom  and  I  along  with  it. 
My  brother  officers  were  as  good  fellows  as  sailors  ought  to  be 
and  generally  are,  but,  naturally,  they  neither  knew  nor  cared 
anything  about  my  pursuits,  nor  understood  why  I  should  be  so 
zealous  in  pursuit  of  the  objects  which  my  friends,  the  middies, 
christened  "  Buffons,"  after  the  title  conspicuous  on  a  volume 
of  the  Suites  d  Buffon,  which  stood  on  my  shelf  in  the  chart- 
room. 

On  the  whole,  life  among  the  company  of  oflScers  was 
satisfactory  enough.*  Huxley's  immediate  superior,  John 
Thompson,  was  a  man  of  sterling  worth ;  and  Captain  Stan- 
ley was  an  excellent  commander,  and  sympathetic  withal. 
Among  Huxley's  messmates  there  was  only  one,  the  ship's 
clerk,  who  ever  made  himself  actively  disagreeable,  and  a 
quarrel  with  him  only  served  to  bring  into  relief  the  young 
surgeon's  integrity  and  directness  of  action.  After  some 
dispute,  in  which  he  had  been  worsted,  this  gentleman 
sought  to  avenge  himself  by  dropping  mysterious  hints  as 
to  Huxley's  conduct  before  joining  the  ship.  He  had  been 
treasurer  of  his  mess;  there  had  been  trouble  about  the 
accounts,  and  a  scandal  had  barely  been  averted.  This  was 
not  long  in  coming  to  Huxley's  ears.  Furiously  indignant 
as  he  was,  he  did  not  lose  his  self-control;  but  promptly 

*  The  Assistant-Surgeon  messed  in  the  gun-room  with  the  middies. 
A  man  in  the  midst  of  a  lot  of  boys,  with  hardly  any  grown-up  com- 
panions, often  has  a  rather  unenviable  position  ;  but,  says  Captain 
Heath,  who  was  one  of  these  middies,  Huxley*s  constant  good  spirits 
and  fun,  when  he  was  not  absorbed  in  his  work,  his  freedom  from  any 
assumption  of  superiority  over  them,  made  the  boys  his  good  comrades 
and  allies. 


1846-47  LEAVES   ENGLAND  33 

inviting  the  members  of  the  wardroom  to  meet  as  a  court 
of  honour,  laid  his  case  before  them,  and  challenged  his 
accuser  to  bring  forward  any  tittle  of  evidence  in  support 
of  his  insinuations.  The  latter  had  nothing  to  say  for  him- 
self, and  made  a  formal  retraction  and  apology.  A  signed 
account  of  the  proceedings  was  kept  by  the  first  officer,  and 
a  duplicate  by  Huxley,  as  a  defence  against  any  possible 
revival  of  the  slander. 

On  December  3,  1846,  the  Rattlesnake  frigate  left  Spit- 
head,  but  toirched  again  at  Plymouth  to  ship  £65,000  of 
specie  for  the  Cape.  This  delay  was  no  pleasure  to  the 
young  Huxley ;  it  only  served  to  renew  the  pain  of  parting 
from  home,  so  that,  after  writing  a  last  letter  to  reassure 
his  mother  as  to  the  comfort  of  his  present  quarters,  he  was 
glad  to  lose  sight  of  the  English  coast  on  the  nth. 

Madeira  was  reached  on  the  i8th.  On  the  26th  they 
sailed  for  Rio  de  Janeiro,  where  they  stayed  from  January  23 
to  February  2,  1847.  Here  Huxley  had  his  first  experience 
of  tropical  dredging  in  Botafago  Bay,  with  Macgillivray, 
naturalist  to  the  expedition.  It  was  a  memorable  occasion, 
the  more  so,  because  in  the  absence  of  a  sieve  they  were 
compelled  to  use  their  hands  as  strainers  the  first  day. 
Happily  the  want  was  afterwards  supplied  by  a  meat  cover. 
From  the  following  letter  it  seems  that  several  prizes  of 
value  were  taken  in  the  dredge : — 

Rio  Janeiro,  yij«.  24,  1847. 
My  dear  Mother — Four  weeks  of  lovely  weather  and  un- 
interrupted fair  winds  brought  us  to  this  southern  fairyland. 
In  my  last  letter  I  told  you  a  considerable  yarn  about  Madeira, 
I  guess,  and  so  for  fear  lest  you  should  imagine  me  scenery 
mad  I  will  spare  you  any  description  of  Rio  Harbour.  Suffice 
it  to  say  that  it  contends  with  the  Bay  of  Naples  for  the  title 
of  the  most  beautiful  place  in  the  world.  It  must  beat  Naples 
in  luxuriance  and  variety  of  vegetation,  but  from  all  accounts, 
to  say  nothing  of  George's  *  picture,  falls  behind  it  in  the  col- 
ours of  sky  and  sea,  that  of  the  latter  being  in  the  harbour  and 
for  soipe  distance  outside  of  a  dirty  olive  green  like  the  wash- 
ings of  a  painter's  palette. 

♦  His  eldest  brother. 


34  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  in 

We  have  come  in  for  the  purpose  of  effecting  some  trifling 
repairs,  which,  though  not  essential  to  the  safety  of  the  ship, 
will  nevertheless  naturally  enhance  the  comfort  of  its  inmates. 
This  you  will  understand  when  I  tell  you  that  in  consequence 
of  these  same  defects  I  have  had  water  an  inch  or  two  deep  in 
my  cabin,  wish-washing  about  ever  since  we  left  Madeira. 

We  crossed  the  line  on  the  13th  of  this  month,  and  as  one 
of  the  uninitiated  I  went  through  the  usual  tomfoolery  prac- 
tised on  that  occasion.  The  affair  has  been  too  often  described 
for  me  to  say  anything  about  it.  I  had  the  good  luck  to  be 
ducked  and  shaved  early,  and  of  course  took  particular  care 
to  do  my  best  in  serving  out  the  unhappy  beggars  who  had  to 
follow.  I  enjoyed  the  fun  well  enough  at  the  time,  but  unques- 
tionably it  is  on  all  grounds  a  most  pernicious  custom.  It 
swelled  our  sick  list  to  double  the  usual  amount,  and  one  poor 
fellow,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  died  of  the  effects  of  pleurisy  then 
contracted. 

We  have  been  quite  long  enough  at  sea  now  to  enable  me  to 
judge  how  I  shall  get  on  in  the  ship,  and  to  form  a  very  clear 
idea  of  how  it  fits  me  and  how  I  fit  it.  In  the  first  place  I  am 
exceedingly  well  and  exceedingly  contented  with  my  lot.  My 
opinion  of  the  advantages  lying  open  to  me  increases  rather  than 
otherwise  as  I  see  my  way  about  me.  I  am  on  capital  terms 
with  all  the  superior  ofHcers,  and  I  find  them  ready  to  g^ve  me 
all  facilities.  I  have  a  place  for  my  books  and  microscope  in 
the  chart  room,  and  there  I  sit  and  read  in  the  morning  much 
as  though  I  were  in  my  rooms  in  Agar  Street  My  immediate 
superior,  Johnny  Thompson,  is  a  long-headed  good  fellow  with- 
out a  morsel  of  humbug  about  him — a  man  whom  I  thoroughly 
respect,  both  morally  and  intellectually.  I  think  it  will  be  my 
fault  if  we  are  not  fast  friends  through  the  commission.  One 
friend  on  board  a  ship  is  as  much  as  anybody  has  a  right  to 
expect. 

It  is  just  the  interval  between  the  sea  and  the  land  breezes, 
the  sea  like  glass,  and  not  a  breath  stirring.  I  shall  become 
soup  if  I  do  not  go  on  deck.  Temp,  in  sun  at  noon  86  in  shade, 
139  in  sun.  N3, — It  has  been  up  to  89  in  shade,  139  in  sun 
since  this. 

March  28. — I  see  I  concluded  with  a  statement  of  temp. 
Since  then  it  has  been  considerably  better — 140  in  sun ;  however, 
in  the  shade  it  rarely  rises  above  86  or  so,  and  when  the^sea  or 
land  breezes  are  blowing  this  is  rather  pleasant  than  otherwise. 

I  have  been  ashore  two  or  three  times.     The  town  is  like 


i847  FIRST  WORK   IN   THE  RATTLESNAKE  35 

most  Portuguese  towns,  hot  and  stinking,  the  odours  here  being 
improved  by  a  strong  flavour  of  nigger  from  the  slaves,  of 
whom  there  is  an  immense  number.  They  seem  to  do  all  the 
work,  and  their  black  skins  shine  in  the  sun  as  though  they  had 
been  touched  up  with  Warren,  30  Strand.  They  are  mostly 
in  capital  condition,  and  on  the  whole  look  happier  than  the 
corresponding  class  in  England,  the  manufacturing  and  agri- 
cultural poor,  I  mean.  I  have  a  much  greater  respect  for  them 
than  for  their  beastly  Portuguese  masters,  than  whom  there  is 
not  a  more  vile,  ignorant,  and  besotted  nation  under  the  sun. 
I  only  regret  that  such  a  glorious  country  as  this  should  be  in 
such  hands.  Had  Brazil  been  colonised  by  Englishmen,  it  would 
by  this  time  have  rivalled  our  Indian  Empire. 

The  naturalist  Macgillivray  and  I  have  had  several  excur- 
sions under  pretence  of  catching  butterflies,  etc.  On  the  whole, 
however,  I  think  we  have  been  most  successful  in  imbibing  sherry 
cobbler,  which  you  get  here  in  great  perfection.    By  the  way,  tell 

Cooke,*  with  my  kindest  regards,  that is  a  lying  old  thief, 

many  of  the  things  he  told  me  about  Macgillivray,  e,g,,  being  an 
ignoramus  in  natural  history,  etc.  etc.,  having  proved  to  be  lies. 
He  is  at  any  rate  a  very  good  ornithologist,  and,  I  can  testify, 
is  exceedingly  zealous  in  his  vocation  as  a  collector.     As  in 

these  (points)  Mr.  's  statements  are  unquestionably  false, 

I  must  confess  I  feel  greatly  inclined  to  disbelieve  his  other 
assertions. 

March  29. — We  sail  hence  on  Sunday  for  the  Cape,  so  I  will 
finish  up.  If  you  have  not  already  written  to  me  at  that  place, 
direct  your  letters  to  H.M.S.  Rattlesnake,  Sydney  (to  wait 
arrival).  We  shall  probably  be  at  the  Cape  some  weeks  sur- 
veying, thence  shall  betake  ourselves  to  the  Mauritius,  and 
leave  a  card  on  Paul  and  Virginia,  thence  on  to  Sydney;  but  it 
is  of  no  use  to  direct  to  any  place  but  the  last. 

PS, — ^The  Rattlesnakes  are  not  idle.  We  shall  most  likely 
have  something  to  say  to  the  English  savans  before  long.  If  I 
have  any  friz  in  the  fire  I  will  let  you  know. 

He  gives  a  fuller  account  of  this  piece  of  work  in  a 
letter  to  his  sister,  dated  Sydney,  August  i,  1847.  The 
two  papers  in  question,  as  appears  from  the  l?riefest  notice 
in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Linfiean  Society,  ascribing  them  to 
WilKam  ( !)  Huxley,  were  read  in  1849  • — 

♦  His  brother-in-law. 


36  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  hi 

In  my  last  letter  I  think  I  mentioned  to  you  that  I  had 
worked  out  and  sent  home  to  the  President  of  the  Linnsan  Soc., 
through  Capt.  Stanley,  an  account  of  Physalia,  or  Portuguese 
man-of-war  as  it  is  called,  an  animal  whose  structure  and  affini- 
ties had  never  been  properly  worked  out.  The  careful  investi- 
gation I  made  gave  rise  to  several  new  ideas  covering  the  whole 
class  of  animals  to  which  this  creature  belongs,  and  these  ideas 
I  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  have  had  many  opportunities  of 
working  out  in  the  course  of  our  subsequent  wanderings,  so  that* 
I  am  provided  with  materials  for  a  second  paper  far  more  con- 
siderable in  extent,  and  embracing  an  altogether  wider  field. 
This  second  paper  is  now  partly  in  esse — that  is,  written  out — 
and  partly  in  posse — ^that  is,  in  my  head;  but  I  shall  send  it 
before  leaving.  Its  title  will  be  "  Observations  upon  the  Anato- 
my of  the  Diphydae,  and  upon  the  Unity  of  Organisation  of  the 
Diphydae  and  Physophoridae,"  and  it  will  have  lots  of  figures 
to  illustrate  it.  Now  when  we  return  from  the  north  I  hope  to 
have  collected  materials  for  a  much  bigger  paper  than  either  of 
these,  and  to  which  they  will  serve  as  steps.  If  my  present 
anticipations  turn  out  correct,  this  paper  will  achieve  one  of  the 
great  ends  of  Zoology  and  Anatomy,  viz.  the  reduction  of  two 
or  three  apparently  widely  separated  and  incongruous  groups 
into  modifications  of  the  single  type,  every  step  of  the  reasoning 
being  based  upon  anatomical  facts.  There!  Think  yourself 
lucky  you  have  only  got  that  to  read  instead  of  the  slight  ab- 
stract of  all.  three  papers  with  which  I  had  some  intention  of 
favouring  you.* 

But  five  years  ago  you  threw  a  slipper  after  me  for  luck  on 
my  first  examination,  and  I  must  have  you  to  do  it  for  every- 
tliing  else. 

At  the  Cape  a  stay  of  a  month  was  made,  from  March  6 
to  April  ID,  and  certain  surveying  work  was  done,  after 
which  the  Rattlesnake  sailed  for  Mauritius.  In  spite  of  the 
fact  that  the  novelty  of  tropical  scenery  had  worn  off,  the 
place  made  a  deep  impression.  He  writes  to  his  mother, 
May  15,  1847:— 

After  a  long  and  somewhat  rough  passage  from  the  Cape,  we 
made  the  highland  of  the  Isle  of  France  on  the  afternoon  of  the 

♦  These  papers  arc  to  be  found  in  vol.  i.  of  the  Scientific  Memoirs  of 
T.  H.  Huxley,  p.  9. 


iS47  MAURITIUS  37 

3rd  of  this  month,  and  passing  round  the  northern  extremity  of 
the  island,  were  towed  into  Port  Louis  by  the  handsomest  of  tugs 
about  noon  on  the  4th.  In  my  former  letter  I  have  spoken  to  you 
of  the  beauty  of  the  places  we  have  visited,  of  the  picturesque 
ruggedness  of  Madeira,  the  fine  luxuriance  of  Rio,  and  the  rude 
and  simple  grandeur  of  South  Africa.  Much  of  my  admiration 
has  doubtless  arisen  from  the  novelty  of  these  tropical  or  semi- 
tropical  scenes,  and  would  be  less  vividly  revived  by  a  second 
visit.  I  have  become  in  a  manner  blase  with  fine  sights  and 
something  of  a  critic.  All  this  is  to  lead  you  to  believe  that  I 
have  really  some  grounds  for  the  raptures  I  am  going  into  pres- 
ently about  Mauritius.  In  truth  it  is  a  complete  paradise,  and 
if  I  had  nothing  better  to  do,  I  should  pick  up  some  pretty 
French  Eve  (and  there  are  plenty)  and  turn  Adam.  N,B.  There 
are  no  serpents  in  the  island. 

This  island  is,  you  know,  the  scene  of  St.  Pierre's  beautiful 
story  of  Paul  and  Virginia,  over  which  I  suppose  most  people 
have  sentimentalised  at  one  time  or  another  of  their  lives.  Until 
we  reached  here  I  did  not  know  that  the  tale  was  like  the  lady's 
improver — a  fiction  founded  on  fact,  and  that  Paul  and  Virginia 
were  at  one  time  flesh  and  blood,  and  that  their  veritable  dust 
was  buried  at  Pamplemousses  in  a  spot  considered  as  one  of  the 
lions  of  the  place,  and  visited  as  classic  ground.  Now,  though 
I  never  was  greatly  given  to  the  tender  and  sentimental,  and 
have  not  had  any  tendencies  that  way  greatly  increased  by  the 
elegancies  and  courtesies  of  a  midshipman's  berth, — not  to  say 
that,  as  far  as  I  recollect,  Mdlle.  Virginia  was  a  bit  of  a  prude, 
and  M.  Paul  a  pump, — yet  were  it  but  for  old  acquaintance  sake, 
I  determined  on  making  a  pilgrimage.  Pamplemousses  is  a  small 
village  abou^  seven  miles  from  Port  Louis,  and  the  road  to  it 
is  lined  by  rows  of  tamarind  trees,  of  cocoanut  trees,  and  sugar- 
canes.  I  started  early  in  the  morning  in  order  to  avoid  the  great 
heat  of  the  middle  of  the  day,  and  having  breakfasted  at  Port 
Louis,  made  an  early  couple  of  hours'  walk  of  it,  meeting  on 
my  way  numbers  of  the  coloured  population  hastening  to  market 
in  all  the  varieties  of  their  curious  Hindoo  costume.  After  some 
trouble  I  found  my  way  to  the  "  Tombeaux  "  as  they  call  them. 
They  are  situated  in  a  garden  at  the  back  of  a  house  now  in 
the  possession  of  one  Mr.  Geary,  an  English  mechanist,  who 
puts  up  half  the  steam  engines  for  the  sugar  mills  in  the  island. 
The  garden  is  now  an  utter  wilderness,  but  still  very  beautiful ; 
round  it  runs  a  grassy  path,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  path  on 
each  side  towards  the   further  extremity  of  the  garden  is  a 


38  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  hi 

funeral  urn  supported  on  a  pedestal,  and  as  dilapidated  as  the 
rest  of  the  affair.  These  dilapidations,  as  usual,  are  the  work 
of  English  visitors,  relic-hunters,  who  are  as  shameless  here 
as  elsewhere.  I  was  exceedingly  pleased  on  the  whole  with  my 
excursion,  and  when  I  returned  I  made  a  drawing  of  the  place, 
which  I  will  send  some  day  or  other. 

Since  tliis  I  have  made,  in  company  with  our  purser  and  a 
passenger,  Mr.  King,  a  regular  pedestrian  trip  to  see  some  very 
beautiful  falls  up  the  country. 

Leaving  Mauritius  on  May  17,  they  prolonged  their 
voyage  to  Sydney  by  being  requisitioned  to  take  more 
specie  to  Hobart  Town,  so  that  Sydney  was  not  reached 
until  July  16,  eight  months  since  they  had  had  news  of 
home. 

The  three  months  spent  in  this  first  visit  to  Sydney 
proved  to  be  one  of  the  most  vital  periods  in  the  young 
surgeon's  career.  From  boyhood  up,  vaguely  conscious  of 
unrest,  of  great  powers  within  him  working  to  find  expres- 
sion, he  had  yet  been  to  a  certain  extent  driven  in  upon  him- 
self. He  had  been  somewhat  isolated  from  those  of  his  own 
age  by  his  eagerness  for  problems  about  which  they  cared 
nothing ;  and  the  tendency  to  solitude,  the  habit  of  outward 
reserve  imposed  upon  an  unusually  warm  nature,  were 
intensified  by  the  fact  that  he  grew  up  in  surroundings  not 
wholly  congenial.  One  member  alone  of  his  family  felt 
with  him  that  complete  and  vivid  sympathy  which  is  so 
necessary  to  the  full  development  of  such  a  nature.  When 
he  was  fourteen  this  sister  married  and  left  home,  but  the 
bond  between  them  was  not  broken.  In  some  ways  it  was 
strengthened  by  the  lad's  love  for  her  children ;  by  his  grief, 
scarcely  less  than  her  own,  at  the  death  of  her  eldest  little 
girl.  Moreover  they  were  brought  into  close  companionship 
for  a  considerable  time  when,  after  his  dismal  period  of 
apprenticeship  at  Rotherhithe — ^to  which  he  could  never 
look  back  without  a  shudder — he  came  to  work  under  her 
husband.  She  had  encouraged  him  in  his  studies;  had 
urged  him  to  work  for  the  Botanical  prize  at  Sydenham 
College;  had  brightened  his  life  with  her  sympathy,  and 
believed  firmly  in  the  brilliant  future  which  awaited  him — ^a 


1848  ENGAGEMENT  39 

belief  which  for  her  sake,  if  for  nothing  else,  he  was  eager  to 
justify  by  his  best  exertions. 

He  had  not  had,  so  far,  much  opportunity  of  entering 
the  social  world ;  but  his  visit  to  Sydney  gave  him  an  oppor- 
tunity of  entering  a  good  society  to  which  his  commission 
in  the  navy  was  a  sufficient  introduction.  He  was  eager 
to  find  friendships  if  he  could,  for  his  reserve  was  anything 
but  misanthropic.  It  was  not  long  before  he  made  the 
acquaintance  of  William  Macleay,  a  naturalist  of  wide  re- 
search and  great  speculative  ability ;  and  struck  up  a  close 
friendship  with  William  Fanning,  one  of  the  leading 
merchants  of  the  town,  a  friendship  which  was  to  have 
momentous  consequences.  For  it  was  at  Fanning's  house 
that  he  met  his  future  wife.  Miss  Henrietta  Anne  Heathom, 
for  whom  he  was  to  serve  longer  and  harder  than  Jacob 
thought  to  serve  for  Rachel,  but  who  was  to  be  his  help 
and  stay  for  forty  years,  in  his  struggles  ready  to  counsel, 
in  adversity  to  comfort ;  the  critic  whose  judgment  he  val- 
ued above  almost  any,  and  whose  praise  he  cared  most 
to  win ;  his  first  care  and  his  latest  thought,  the  other  self, 
whose  union  with  him  was  a  supreme  example  of  mutual 
sincerity  and  devotion. 

It  was  a  case  of  love,  if  not  actually  at  first  sight,  yet  of 
very  rapid  growth  when  he  came  to  learn  the  quiet  strength 
and  tenderness  of  her  nature  as  displayed  in  the  manage- 
ment of  her  sister's  household.  A  certain  simplicity  and 
directness  united  with  an  unusual  degree  of  cultivation,  had 
attracted  him  from  the  first.  She  had  been  two  years  at 
school  in  Germany,  and  her  knowledge  of  German  and  of 
German  literature  brought  them  together  on  common 
ground.  Things  ran  very  smoothly  at  the  beginning,  and 
the  young  couple,  whose  united  ages  amounted  to  forty- 
four  years,  became  engaged. 

The  marriage  was  to  take  place  on  his  promotion  to  the 
rank  of  full  surgeon — a  promotion  he  hoped  to  attain  speed- 
ily at  the  conclusion  of  the  voyage  on  the  strength  of  his 
scientific  work,  for  this  was  the  inducement  held  out  by  the 
Admiralty  to  energetic  subalterns.  The  following  letter  to 
his  sister  describes  the  situation: — 


40 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  hi 


Sydney  Harbour,  March  21,  1848. 
...  I  have  deferred  writing  to  you  in  the  hope  of  knowing 
something  from  yourself  of  your  doings  and  whereabouts,  and 
now  that  we  are  on  the  eve  of  departing  for  a  long  cruise  in 
Torres  Straits,  I  will  no  longer  postpone  the  giving  you  some 
account  of  "  was  ist  geschehen  "  on  this  side  of  the  world.  We 
spent  three  months  in  Sydney,  and  a  gay  three  months  of  it  we 
had, — nothing  but  balls  and  parties  the  whole  time.  In  this 
corner  of  the  universe,  where  men  of  war  are  rather  scarce, 
even  the  old  Rattlesnake  is  rather  a  lion,  and  her  officers  are 
esteemed  accordingly.  Besides,  to  tell  you  the  truth,  we  are 
rather  agreeable  people  than  otherwise,  and  can  manage  to  get  up 
a  very  decent  turn-out  on  board  on  occasion.  What  think  you  of 
your  grave,  scientific  brother  turning  out  a  ball-goer  and  doing 
the  "  light  fantastic  "  to  a  great  extent  ?  It  is  a  great  fact,  I 
assure  you.  But  there  is  a  method  in  my  madness.  I  found  it 
exceedingly  disagreeable  to  come  to  a  great  place  like  Sydney 
and  think  there  was  not  a  soul  who  cared  whether  I  was  alive 
or  dead,  so  I  determined  to  go  into  what  society  was  to  be  had 
and  see  if  I  could  not  pick  up  a  friend  or  two  among  the  multi- 
tude of  the  empty  and  frivolous.  I  am  happy  to  say  that  I  have 
had  more  success  than  I  hoped  for  or  deserved,  and  then  as 
now,  two  or  three  houses  where  I  can  go  and  feel  myself  at 
home  at  all  times.  But  my  "  home  "  in  Sydney  is  the  house  of 
my  good  friend  Mr.  Fanning,  one  of  the  first  merchants  in  the 
place.  But  thereby  hangs  a  tale  which,  of  all  people  in  the 
world,  I  must  tell  you.  Mrs.  Fanning  has  a  sister,  and  the  dear 
little  sister  and  I  managed  to  fall  in  love  with  one  another  in 
the  most  absurd  manner  after  seeing  one  another — I  will  not 
tell  you  how  few  times,  lest  you  should  laugh.  Do  you  remem- 
ber how  you  used  to  talk  to  me  about  choosing  a  wife?  Well, 
I  think  that  my  choice  would  justify  even  your  fastidiousness. 
...  I  think  you  will  understand  how  happy  her  love  ought  to 
and  does  make  me.  I  fear  that  in  this  respect  indeed  the  ad- 
vantage is  on  my  side,  for  my  present  wandering  life  and  uncer- 
tain position  must  necessarily  give  her  many  an  anxious  thought. 
Our  future  is  indeed  none  of  the  clearest  Three  years  at  the 
very  least  must  elapse  before  the  Rattlesnake  returns  to  Eng- 
land, and  then  unless  I  can  write  myself  into  my  promotion  or 
something  else,  we  shall  be  just  where  we  were.  Nevertheless 
I  have  the  strongest  persuasion  that  four  years  hence  I  shall 
be  married  and  settled  in  England.    We  shall  see. 


1848  NEW   TIES  41 

I  am  getting  on  capitally  at  present.  Habit,  inclination,  and 
now  a  sense  of  duty  keep  me  at  work,  and  the  nature  of  our 
cruise  affords  me  opportunities  such  as  none  but  a  blind  man 
would  fail  to  make  use  of.  I  have  sent  two  or  three  papers 
home  already  to  be  published,  which  I  have  great  hopes  will 
throw  light  upon  some  hitherto  obscure  branches  of  natucal  his- 
tory, and  I  have  just  finished  a  more  important  one,  which  I 
intend  to  get  read  at  the  Royal  Society.  The  other  day  I  sub- 
mitted it  to  William  Macleay  (the  celebrated  propounder  of  the 
Quinary  system),  who  has  a  beautiful  place  near  Sydney,  and, 
I  hear,  "werry  much  approves  what  I  have  done."  All  this 
goes  to  the  comforting  side  of  the  question,  and  gives  me  hope 
of  being  able  to  follow  out  my  favourite  pursuits  in  course  of 
time,  without  hindrance  to  what  is  now  the  main  object  of  my 
life.  I  tell  Netty  to  look  to  being  a  "  Frau  Professorin  "  one 
of  these  odd  days,  and  she  has  faith,  as  I  believe  would  have 
if  I  told  her  I  was  going  to  be  Prime  Minister. 

We  go  to  the  northward  again  about  the  23rd  of  this  month 
(April),  and  shall  be  away  for  ten  or  twelve  months  surveying 
in  Torres  Straits.  I  believe  we  are  to  refit  in  Port  Essington,  and 
that  will  be  the  only  place  approaching  to  civilisation  that  we 
shall  see  for  the  whole  of  that  time;  and  after  July  or  August 
next,  when  a  provision  ship  is  to  come  up  to  us,  we  shall  not 
even  get  letters.  I  hope  and  trust  I  shall  hear  from  you  before 
then.  Do  not  suppose  that  my  new  ties  have  made  me  forgetful 
of  old  ones.  On  tfie  other  hand,  these  are  if  anything  strength- 
ened. Does  not  my  dearest  Nettie  love  you  as  I  do !  and  do  I 
not  often  wish  that  you  could  see  and  love  and  esteem  her  as 
I  know  you  would.  We  often  talk  about  you,  and  I  tell  her 
stories  of  old  times. 

Another  letter,  a  year  later,  gives  his  mother  the  answers 
to  a  string  of  questions  which,  mother-like,  she  had  asked 
him,  thirsting  for  exact  and  minute  information  about  her 
future  daughter-in-law : — 

Sydney,  Feb,  i,  1849. 

(After  describing  how  he  had  just  come  back  from  a  nine 
months*  cruise) — First  and  foremost,  my  dear  mother,  I  must 
thank  you  for  your  very  kind  letter  of  September  1848.  I  read 
the  greater  part  of  it  to  Nettie,  who  was  as  much  pleased  as  I 
with  your  kindly  wishes  towards  both  of  us.  Now  I  suppose  I 
must  do  my  best  to  answer  your  questions.  First,  as  to  age, 
Nettie  is  about  three  months  younger  than  myself — that  is  the 


42  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  iii 

difference  in  our  years,  but  she  is  in  fact  as  much  younger  than 
her  years  as  I  am  older  than  mine.  Next,  as  to  complexion  she 
is  exceedingly  fair,  with  the  Saxon  yellow  hair  and  blue  eyes. 
Then  as  to  face,  I  really  don't  know  whether  she  is  pretty  or  not. 
I  have  never  been  able  to  decide  the  matter  in  my  own  mind. 
Sometimes  I  think  she  is,  and  sometimes  I  wonder  how  the  idea 
ever  came  into  my  head.  Whether  or  not,  her  personal  appear- 
ance has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  hold  she  has  upon  my 
mind,  for  I  have  seen  hundreds  of  prettier  women.  But  I  never 
met  with  so  sweet  a  temper,  so  self-sacrificing  and  affectionate  a 
disposition,  or  so  pure  and  womanly  a  mind,  and  from  the  per- 
fectly intimate  footing  on  which  I  stand  with  her  family  I  have 
plenty  of  opportunities  of  judging.  As  I  tell  her,  the  only  great 
folly  I  am  aware  of  her  being  guilty  of  was  the  leaving  her 
happiness  in  the  hands  of  a  man  like  myself,  struggling  upwards 
and  certain  of  nothing. 

As  to  my  future  intentions  I  can  say  very  little  about  them. 
With  my  present  income,  of  course,  marriage  is  rather  a  bad  look 
out,  but  I  do  not  think  it  would  be  at  all  fair  towards  N.  herself 
to  leave  this  country  without  giving  her  a  wife's  claim  upon 
me.  ...  It  is  very  unlikely  I  shall  ever  remain  in  the  colony. 
Nothing  but  a  very  favourable  chance  could  induce  me  to 
do  so. 

Much  must  depend  upon  how  things  go  in  England.  If  my 
various  papers  meet  with  any  success,  I  may  perhaps  be  able  to 
leave  the  service.  At  present,  however,  I  have  not  heard  a  word 
of  an3rthing  I  have  sent.  Professor  Forbes  has,  I  believe,  pub- 
lished some  of  MacGillivray's  letters  to  him,  but  he  has  appar- 
ently forgotten  to  write  to  MacGillivray  himself,  or  to  me.  So 
I  shall  certainly  send  him  nothing  more,  especially  as  Mr.  Mac- 
Leay  (of  this  place,  and  a  great  man  in  the  naturalist  world) 
has  offered  to  get  anything  of  mine  sent  to  the  Zoological 
Society. 

In  the  paper  mentioned  in  the  letter  of  March  21,  above 
("  On  the  Anatomy  and  Affinities  of  the  Family  of  the 
Medusae  "),  Huxley  aimed  at  **  giving  broad  and  general 
views  of  the  whole  class,  considered  as  organised  upon  a 
given  type,  and  inquiring  into  its  relations  with  other  fam- 
ilies," unlike  previous  observers  whose  patience  and  ability 
had  been  devoted  rather  to  **  stating  matters  of  detail  con- 
cerning particular  genera  and  species."  At  the  outset,  sec- 
tion 8  {Set.  Mem,,  i.  11),  he  states — 


1848  AN   IMPORTANT   DISCOVERY  43 

I  would  wish  to  lay  particular  stress  upon  the  composition  of 
this  (the  stomach)  and  other  organs  of  the  Medusae  out  of  two 
distinct  membranes,  as  I  believe  that  it  is  one  of  the  essential 
peculiarities  of  their  structure,  and  that  a  knowledge  of  the  fact 
is  of  great  importance  in  investigating  their  homologies.  I  will 
call  these  two  membranes  as  such,  and  independently  of  any 
modifications  into  particular  organs,  **  foundation  membranes." 

And  in  section  56  (p.  23)  one  of  the  general  conclusions 
which  he  deduces  from  his  observations,  is 

That  a  Medusa  consists  essentially  of  two  membranes  in- 
closing a  variously-shaped  cavity,  inasmuch  as  its  various  organs 
are  so  composed, 

a  peculiarity  shared  by  certain  other  families  of  zoophytes. 
This  is  the  point  which  that  eminent  authority,  Professor 
G.  J.  Allman,  had  in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  to  call  my 
attention 

to  a  fact  which  has  been  overlooked  in  all  the  notices  I  have 
seen,  and  which  I  regard  as  one  of  the  greatest  claims  of  his 
splendid  work  on  the  recognition  of  zoologists.  I  refer  to  his 
discovery  that  the  body  of  the  Medusae  is  essentially  composed 
of  two  membranes,  an  outer  and  an  inner,  and  his  recognition  of 
these  as  the  homologues  of  the  two  primary  germinal  leaflets 
in  the  vertebrate  embryo.  Now  this  discovery  stands  at  the  very 
basis  of  a  philosophic  zoology,  and  of  a  true  conception  of  the 
affinities  of  animals.  It  is  the  ground  on  which  Hseckel  has 
founded  his  famous  Gastraea  Theory,  and  without  it  Kowalesky 
could  never  have  announced  his  great  discovery  of  the  affinity 
of  the  Ascidians  and  Vertebrates,  by  which  zoologists  had  been 
startled. 


CHAPTER   IV 
1848-1850 

The  whole  cruise  of  the  Rattlesnake  lasted  almost  pre- 
cisely four  years,  her  stay  in  Australian  waters  nearly  three. 
Of  this  time  altogether  eleven  months  were  spent  at  Sydney, 
namely,  July  16  to  October  11,  1847;  January  14  to  Feb- 
ruary 2,  and  March  9  to  April  29,  1848;  January  24  to 
May  8,  1849;  2tnd  February  14  to  May  2,  1850.  The  three 
months  of  the  first  northern  cruise  were  spent  in  the  survey 
of  the  Inshore  Passage — ^the  passage,  that  is,  within  the 
Great  Barrier  Reef  for  ships  proceeding  from  India  to  Syd- 
ney. In  1848,  while  waiting  for  the  right  season  to  visit 
Torres  Straits,  a  short  cruise  was  made  in  February  and 
March,  to  inspect  the  lighthouses  in  Bass'  Straits.  It  was 
on  this  occasion  that  Huxley  visited  Melbourne,  then  an 
insignificant  town,  before  the  discovery  of  gold  had  brought 
a  rush  of  immigrants. 

The  second  northern  cruise  of  1848,  which  lasted  nine 
months,  had  for  its  object  the  completion  of  the  survey  of 
the  Inner  Passage  as  far  as  New  Guinea  and  the  adjoining 
archipelago.  The  third  cruise  in  1849-50  again  lasted  nine 
months,  and  continued  the  survey  in  Torres  Straits,  the 
Louisiade  archipelago,  and  the  south-eastern  part  of  New 
Guinea.  After  this  the  original  plan  was  to  make  a  fourth 
cruise,  filling  up  the  charts  of  the  Inner  Passage  on  the 
east  coast,  and  surveying  the  straits  of  Alass  between 
Lombok  and  Sumbawa  in  the  Malay  Archipelago;  then, 
instead  of  returning  to  Sydney,  to  proceed  to  Singa- 
pore and  so  home  by  the  Cape.     But  these  plans  were 

44 


i849  VOYAGE  OF   THE  RATTLESNAKE  45 

altered  by  the  untimely  death  of  Captain  Stanley  on 
March  13,  and  the  Rattlesnake  sailed  for  England  direct 
in  May  1850. 

There  was  a  great  monotony  about  these  cruises,  par- 
ticularly to  those  who  were  not  constantly  engaged  in  the 
active  work  of  surveying.  The  ship  sailed  slowly  from  place 
to  place,  hunting  out  reefs  and  islets ;  a  stay  of  a  few  days 
would  be  made  at  some  lonely  island,  while  charting  ex- 
peditions "Went  out  in  the  boats  or  supplies  of  water  and 
fresh  fruits  were  laid  in.  On  the  second  expedition  there 
were  two  cases  of  scurvy  on  board  by  the  time  the  mail 
from  Sydney  reached  the  ship  at  Cape  York  with  letters 
and  lime-juice,  the  first  reminder  of  civilisation  for  four 
months  and  a  half.  On  this  cruise  there  was  an  unusual 
piece  of  interest  in  Kennedy's  ill-fated  expedition,  which 
the  Rattlesnake  landed  in  Rockingham  Bay,  and  trusted 
to  meet  again  at  Cape  York.  Happy  it  was  for  Huxley  that 
his  duties  forbade  him  to  accept  Kennedy's  proposal  to 
join  the  expedition.  After  months  of  weary  struggles  in 
the  dense  scrub,  Kennedy  himself,  who  had  pushed  on 
for  help  with  his  faithful  black  man  Jacky,  was  speared 
by  the  natives  when  almost  in  sight  of  Cape  York;  Jack 
barely  managed  to  make  his  way  there  through  his 
enemies,  and  guided  a  party  to  the  rescue  of  the  two 
starved  and  exhausted  survivors  of  the  disease-stricken 
camp  by  the  Sugarloaf  Hill.  It  was  barely  time.  An- 
other hour,  and  they  too  would  have  been  killed  by  the 
crowd  of  blackfellows  who  hovered  about  in  hopes  of 
booty,  and  wer^  only  dispersed  for  a  moment  by  the  res- 
cue party. 

On  the  third  cruise  there  were  a  few  adventures  more 
directly  touching  the  Rattlesnake.  Twice  the  landing  par- 
ties, including  Huxley,  were  within  an  ace  of  coming  to 
blows  with  the  islanders  of  the  Louisiades,  and  on  one 
occasion  a  portly  member  of  the  gun-room,  being  cut  off 
by  these  black  gentry,  only  saved  his  life  by  parting  with 
all  his  clothes  as  presents  to  them,  and  keeping  them  amused 
by  an  impromptu  dance  in  a  state  of  nature  under  the 
broiling  sun,  until  a  party  came  to  his  relief.     At  Cape 


46  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  iv 

York  also,  a  white  woman  was  rescued  who  had  been  made 
prisoner  by  the  blacks  from  a  wreck,  and  had  lived  among 
them  for  several  years.  Here,  too, 'Huxley  and  MacGilli- 
vray  made  a  trip  inland,  and  were  welcomed  by  a  native 
chief,  who  saw  in  the  former  the  returning  spirit  of  his 
dead  brother. 

Throughout  the  voyage  Huxley  was  busy  with  his 
pencil,  and  many  lithographs  from  his  drawings  illustrate 
the  account  of  the  voyage  afterwards  published.  As  to 
his  scientific  work,  he  was  accumulating  a  large  stock  of 
observations,  but  felt  rather  sore  about  the  papers  which  he 
had  already  sent  home,  for  no  word  had  reached  him  as  to 
their  fate,  not  even  that  they  had  been  received  or  looked 
over  by  Forbes,  to  whom  they  had  been  consigned.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  they  had  not  been  neglected,  as  he  was  to 
find  out  on  his  return;  but  meanwhile  the  state  of  affairs 
was  not  reassuring  to  a  man  whose  dearest  hopes  were 
bound  up  in  the  reception  he  could  win  for  these  and  similar 
researches.  Altogether,  it  was  with  no  little  joy  that  he 
turned  his  back  on  the  sweltering  heat  of  Torres  Straits, 
on  the  great  mountains  of  New  Guinea,  the  Owen  Stanley 
range,  which  had  remained  hidden  from  D'Urville  in  the 
Astrolabe  to  be  discovered  by  the  explorers  on  the  Rattle- 
snake,  and  the  far  stretching  archipelago  of  the  Louisiades, 
one  tiny  island  in  which  still  bears  the  name  of  Huxley, 
after  the  assistant-surgeon  of  the  Rattlesnake. 

A  few  extracts  from  letters  of  the  time  will  give  a  more 
vivid  idea  of  what  the  voyage  was  like.  The  first  is  from 
a  letter  to  his  mother,  dated  February  i,  1849: — 

...  I  suppose  you  have  wondered  at  the  long  intervals  of 
my  letters,  but  my  silence  has  been  forced.  I  wrote  from  Rock- 
ingham Bay  in  May,  and  from  Cape  York  in  October.  After 
leaving  the  latter  place  we  have  had  no  communication  with  any 
one  but  the  folks  at  Port  Essington,  which  is  a  mere  military 
post,  without  any  certain  means  of  communication  with  Eng- 
land. We  were  ten  weeks  on  our  passage  from  Port  Essington 
to  Sydney  and  touched  nowhere,  so  that  you  may  imagine  we 
were  pretty  well  tired  of  the  sea  by  the  time  we  reached  Port 
Jackson. 


i849  VOYAGE  OF  THE  RATTLESNAKE  47 

Thank  God  we  are  now  safely  anchored  in  our  old  quarters, 
and  for  the  next  three  months  shall  enjoy  a  few  of  those  com- 
forts that  make  life  worth  the  living.  .  .  . 

The  only  place  we  have  visited  since  my  last  budget  to  you 
was  Port  Essington,  a  military  post  which  has  been  an  object 
of  much  attention  for  some  time  past  in  connection  with  the 
steam  navigation  between  Sydney  and  India.  It  is  about  the 
most  useless,  miserable,  ill-managed  hole  in  Her  Majesty's  do- 
minions. Placed  fifteen  miles  inland  on  the  swampy  banks  of 
an  estuary  out  of  reach  of  the  sea  breezes,  it  is  the  most  insuffer- 
ably hot  and  enervating  place  imaginable.  The  temperature  of 
the  water  alongside  the  ship  was  from  88  to  90,  '%,e,  about  that 
of  a  moderately  warm  bath,  so  that  you  may  fancy  what  it  is 
on  land.  Added  to  this,  the  commandant  is  a  litigious  old  fool, 
always  at  war  with  his  officers,  and  endeavouring  to  make  the 
place  as  much  of  a  hell  morally  as  it  is  physically.  Little  more 
than  two  years  ago  a  detachment  of  sixty  men  came  out  to  the 
settlement.  At  the  parade  on  the  Sunday  I  was  there;  there 
were  just  ten  men  present.  The  rest  were  invalided,  dead,  or 
sick.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  half  of  this  was  the 
result  of  ill-management.  The  climate  in  itself  is  not  par- 
ticularly unhealthy.  We  were  all  glad  to  get  away  from  the 
place. 

Another  is  to  his  sister,  under  date  Sydney,  March  14, 
1849:— 

By  the  way,  I  may  as  well  give  you  a  short  account  of  our 
cruise.  We  started  from  here  last  May  to  survey  what  is  called 
the  inner  passage  to  India.  You  must  know  that  the  east  coast 
of  Australia  has  running  parallel  to  it  at  distances  of  from  five 
miles  to  seventy  or  eighty  an  almost  continuous  line  of  coral 
reefs,  the  Great  Barrier  as  it  is  called.  Outside  this  line  is  the 
great  Pacific,  inside  is  a  space  varying  in  width  as  above,  and 
cut  up  by  little  islands  and  detached  reefs.  Now  to  get  to  India 
from  Sydney,  ships  must  go  either  inside  or  outside  the  Great 
Barrier.  The  inside  passage  has  been  called  the  Inner  Route  in 
consequence  of  its  desirability  for  steamers,  and  our  business 
has  been  to  mark  out  this  Inner  Route  safely  and  clearly  among 
the  labyrinth-like  islands  and  reefs  within  the  Barrier.  And  a 
parlous  dull  business  it  was  for  those  who,  like  myself,  had  no 
necessary  and  constant  occupation.  Fancy  for  five  mortal 
months  shifting  from  patch  to  patch  of  white  sand  in  latitude 


48  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  iv 

from  17  to  10  south,  living  on  salt  pork  and  beef,  and  seeing 
no  mortal  face  but  our  own  sweet  countenances  considerably 
obscured  by  the  long  beard  and  moustaches  with  which,  partly 
from  laziness  and  partly  from  comfort,  we  had  become  adorned. 
I  cultivated  a  peak  in  Charles  I.  style,  which  imparted  a  re- 
markably peculiar  and  triste  expression  to  my  sunburnt  phiz, 
heightened  by  the  fact  that  the  aforesaid  beard  was,  I  regret 
to  say  it,  of  a  very  questionable  auburn — my  messmates  called 
it  red. 

We  convoyed  a  land  expedition  as  far  as  the  Rockingham 
Bay  in  17  south  under  a  Mr.  Kennedy,  which  was  to  work  its 
way  up  to  Cape  York  in  11  south  and  there  meet  us.  A  fine 
noble  fellow  poor  Kennedy  was  too.  I  was  a  good  deal  with 
him  at  Rockingham  Bay,  and  indeed  accompanied  him  in  the 
exploring  trips  which  he  made  for  some  four  or  five  days  in 
order  to  see  how  the  land  lay  about  him.  In  fact  we  got  on  so 
well  together  that  he  wanted  me  much  to  accompany  him  and 
join  the  ship  again  at  Cape  York,  and  if  the  Service  would  have 
permitted  of  my  absence  I  should  certainly  have  done  so.  But 
it  was  well  I  did  not.  Out  of  thirteen  men  composing  the  party 
but  three  remain  alive.  The  rest  have  perished  by  starvation 
or  the  spears  of  the  natives.  Poor  Kennedy  himself  had,  in 
company  with  the  black  fellow  attached  to  the  party,  by  dint  of 
incredible  exertions,  pushed  on  until  he  came  within  sight  of 
the  provision  vessel  waiting  his  arrival  at  Cape  York.  But 
here,  within  grasp  of  his  object,  a  large  party  of  natives  attacked 
and  killed  him.  The  black  fellow  alone  reached  Cape  York 
with  the  news.  The  other  two  men  who  were  saved  were  the 
sole  survivors  of  the  party  Kennedy  left  behind  him  at  a  spot 
near  the  coast,  and  were  picked  up  by  the  provision  vessel  when 
she  returned. 

You  may  be  sure  I  am  not  sorry  to  return  home.  I  say  home 
advisedly,  for  my  friend  Fanning's  house  is  as  completely  my 
home  as  it  well  can  be.  And  then  Nettie  had  not  heard  anything 
of  me  for  six  months,  so  that  I  have  been  petted  and  spoiled 
ever  since  we  came  in.  ...  As  I  tell  her  I  fear  she  has  rested 
her  happiness  on  a  very  insecure  foundation;  but  she  is  full  of 
hope  and  confidence,  and  to  me  her  love  is  the  faith  that  moveth 
mountains.  We  have,  as  you  may  be  sure,  a  thousand  difficul- 
ties in  our  way,  but  like  Danton  I  take  for  my  motto,  "  De 
Taudace  et  encore  de  Taudace  et  tou jours  de  Taudace,"  and  look 
forward  to  a  happy  termination,  nothing  doubting. 


i850  SECOND  CRUISE  OF   THE  RATTLESNAKE  49 

To  HIS  Mother 
(Announcing  the  probable  time  of  his  return). 

Sydney,  Feb,  11,  1850. 

I  cannot  at  all  realise  the  idea  of  our  return.  We  have  been 
leading  such  a  semi-savage  life  for  years  past,  such  a  wandering 
nomadic  existence,  that  any  other  seems  in  a  manner  unnatural 
to  me.  Time  was  when  I  should  have  looked  upon  our  return 
with  unmixed  joy ;  but  so  many  new  and  strong  ties  have  arisen 
to  unite  me  with  Sydney,  that  now  when  the  anchor  is  getting 
up  for  England,  I  scarcely  know  whether  to  rejoice  or  to  grieve. 
You  must  not  be  angry,  my  dear  Mother;  I  have  none  the  less 
affection  for  you  or  any  other  of  those  whom  I  love  in  England 
—only  a  very  great  deal  for  a  certain  little  lassie  whom  I  must 
leave  behind  me  without  clearly  seeing  when  we  are  to  meet 
again.  You  must  remember  the  Scripture  as  my  excuse,  "A 
man  shall  leave  his  father  and  mother  and  cleave  unto  his"  (I 
wish  I  could  add)  wife.  Our  long  cruises  are  fine  times  for 
reflection,  and  during  the  last  I  determined  that  we  would  be 
terribly  prudent  and  get  married  about  1870,  or  the  Greek 
Kalends,  or,  what  is  about  the  same  thing,  whenever  I  am 
afflicted  with  the  malheur  de  richesses. 

People  talk  about  the  satisfaction  of  an  approving  con- 
science. Mine  approves  me  intensely;  but  I'll  be  hanged  if  I  see 
the  satisfaction  of  it.  I  feel  much  more  inclined  to  swear 
"  worse  than  our  armies  in  Flanders."  ...  So  far  as  my  private 
doings  are  concerned,  I  hear  very  satisfactory  news  of  them. 
I  heard  from  an  old  messmate  of  mine  at  Haslar  the  other  day 
that  Dr.  Mac  William,  F.R.S.,  one  of  our  deputy-inspectors,  had 
been  talking  about  one  of  my  papers,  and  gave  him  to  under- 
stand that  it  was  to  be  printed.  Furthermore,  he  is  a  great 
advocate  for  the  claims  of  assistant  surgeons  to  ward-room 
rank,  and  all  that  sort  of  stuff,  and,  I  am  told,  quoted  me  as  an 
example!  Henceforward  I  look  upon  the  learned  doctor  as  a 
man  of  sound  sense  and  discrimination !  Without  joking,  how- 
ever, I  am  glad  to  have  come  under  his  notice,  as  he  may  be  of 
essential  use  to  me.  I  find  myself  getting  horribly  selfish,  look- 
ing at  everything  with  regard  to  the  influence  it  may  have  on 
my  grand  objects. 

Further  descriptions  of  the  voyage  are  to  be  drawn  from 
an  article  in  the   Westminster  Review  for  January   1854 


so 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  iv 


(vol.  v.),  in  which,  under  the  title  of  "  Science  at  Sea,"  Hux- 
ley reviewed  the  Voyage  of  the  Rattlesnake  by  MacGillivray, 
the  naturalist  to  the  expedition,  which  had  recently  ap- 
peared. This  book  gave  very  few  descriptions  of  the  inci- 
dents and  life  on  board,  and  so  drew  in  many  ways  a  col- 
ourless picture  of  the  expedition.  This  defect  the  reviewer 
sought  to  remedy  by  giving  extracts  from  the  so-called 
"  unpublished  correspondence "  of  one  of  the  officers — 
sketches  apparently  written  for  the  occasion — ^as  well  as 
from  an  equally  unpublished  but  more  real  journal  kept  by 
the  same  hand. 

The  description  of  the  ship  herself,  of  her  inadequate 
equipment  for  the  special  purposes  she  was  to  carry  out,  of 
the  officers'  quiet  contempt  of  scientific  pursuits,  which  not 
even  the  captain's  influence  was  able  to  subdue,  of  the 
illusory  promises  of  help  and  advancement  held  out  by  the 
Admiralty  to  young  investigators,  makes  a  striking  foil  to 
the  spirit  in  which  the  Government  of  thirty  years  later 
undertook  a  greater  scientific  expedition.  Perhaps  some 
vivid  recollections  of  this  voyage  did  something  to  better  the 
conditions  under  which  the  later  investigators  worked. 

Thus,  p.  lOo: 

In  the  year  1846,  Captain  Owen  Stanley,  a  young  and  zeal- 
ous officer,  of  good  report  for  his  capabilities  as  a  scientific 
surveyor,  was  entrusted  with  the  command  of  the  Rattlesnake, 
a  vessel  of  six-and-twenty  guns,  strong  and  seaworthy,  but  one 
of  that  class  unenviably  distinguished  in  the  war-time  as  a 
**  donkey-frigate."  To  the  laity  it  would  seem  that  a  ship  jour- 
neying to  unknown  regions,  when  the  lives  of  a  couple  of  hun- 
dred men  may,  at  any  moment,  depend  upon  her  handiness  in 
going  about,  so  as  to  avoid  any  suddenly  discovered  danger, 
should  possess  the  best  possible  sailing  powers.  The  Admiralty, 
however,  makes  its  selection  upon  other  principles,  and  explor- 
ing vessels  will  be  invariably  found  to  be  the  slowest,  clumsiest, 
and  in  every  respect  the  most  inconvenient  ships  which  wear 
the  pennant.  In  accordance  with  the  rule,  such  was  the  Rattle- 
snake; and  to  carry  out  the  spirit  of  the  authorities  more  com- 
pletely, she  was  turned  out  of  Portsmouth  dockyard  in  such  a 
disgraceful  state  of  unfitness,  that  her  lower  deck  was  con- 
tinually under  water  during  the  voyage. 


1846  EQUIPMENT   OF  A   SURVEYING  SHIP  51 

Again,  p.  100 : 

It  is  necessary  to  be  provided  with  books  of  reference,  which 
are  ruinously  expensive  to  a  private  individual,  though  a  mere 
dewdrop  in  the  general  cost  of  the  fitting  out  of  a  ship,  espe- 
cially as  they  might  be  kept  in  store,  and  returned  at  the  end  of 
a  commission,  like  other  stores.  A  hundred  pounds  would  have 
well  supplied  the  Rattlesnake;  but  she  sailed  without  a  volume, 
an  application  made  by  her  captain  not  having  been  attended  to. 

P.  103: 

Of  all  those  who  were  actively  engaged  upon  the  survey,  the 
young  commander  alone  was  destined  by  inevitable  fate  to  be 
robbed  of  his  just  reward.  Care  and  anxiety,  from  the  mobility 
of  his  temperament,  sat  not  so  lightly  upon  him  as  they  might 
have  done,  and  this,  joined  to  the  physical  debility  produced  by 
the  enervating  climate  of  New  Guinea,  fairly  wore  him  out, 
making  him  prematurely  old  before  much  more  than  half  of 
the  allotted  span  was  completed.  But  he  died  in  harness,  the  end 
attained,  the  work  that  lay  before  him  honourably  done.  Which 
of  us  may  dare  to  ask  for  more?  He  has  raised  an  enduring 
monument  in  his  works,  and  his  epitaph  shall  be  the  grateful 
thanks  of  many  a  mariner  threading  his  way  among  the  mazes 
of  the  Coral  Sea. 

P.  104: 

The  world  enclosed  within  the  timj)ers  of  a  man-of-war  is  a 
most  remarkable  community,  hardly  to  be  rendered  vividly 
intelligible  to  the  mere  landsman  in  diese  days  of  constitutional 
government  and  freedom  of  the  press. 

Then  follows  a  vigorous  sketch  of  sea  life  from  Cha- 
misso,  suggesting  that  the  type  of  one's  relation  to  the  cap- 
tain is  to  be  found  in  Jean  Paul's  Biography  of  the  Twins, 
who  were  united  back  to  back.  This  sketch  Huxley  en- 
forces by  a  passage  from  the  imaginary  journal  aforesaid, 
"  indited  apparently  when  the  chains  were  yet  new  and 
somewhat  galled  the  writer,"  to  judge  from  which  "little 
alteration  would  seem  to  have  taken  place  in  nautical  life  " 
since  Chamisso's  voyage,  thirty  years  before. 

You  tell  me  (he  writes),  that  you  sigh  for  my  life  of  freedom 
and  adventure ;  and  that,  compared  with  mine,  the  conventional 
monotony  of  your  own  stinks  in  your  nostrils.    My  dear  fellow. 


52 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  iv 


be  patient,  and  listen  to  what  I  have  to  say;  you  will  then,  per- 
haps, be  a  little  more  content  with  your  lot  in  life,  and  a  little 
less  desirous  of  mine.  Of  all  extant  lives,  that  on  board  a  ship- 
of- war  is  the  most  artificial — ^whether  necessarily  so  or  not  is  a 
question  I  will  not  undertake  to  decide;  but  the  fact  is  indubi- 
table. 

How  utterly  disgusted  you  get  with  one  another!  Little 
peculiarities  which  would  give  a  certain  charm  and  variety  to 
social  intercourse  under  any  other  circumstances,  become 
sources  of  absolute  pain,  and  almost  uncontrollable  irritation, 
when  you  are  shut  up  with  them  day  and  night  One  good 
friend  and  messmate  of  mine  has  a  peculiar  laugh,  whose  itera- 
tion on  our  last  cruise  nearly  drove  me  insane. 

There  is  no  being  alone  in  a  ship.  Sailors  are  essentially 
gregarious  animals,  and  don't  at  all  understand  the  necessity 
under  which  many  people  labour — I  among  the  rest— of  having 
a  little  solitary  converse  with  oneself  occasionally. 

Then,  to  a  landsman  fresh  from  ordinary  society  and  its 
peculiarly  undemonstrative  ways,  there  is  something  very  won- 
derful about  naval  discipline.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the 
subordination  kept  up  is  more  than  is  necessary,  nor  perhaps  is 
it  in  reality  greater  than  is  to  be  found  in  a  college,  or  a  regi- 
ment, or  a  large  mercantile  house;  but  it  is  made  so  very  ob- 
vious. You  not  only  feel  the  bit,  but  you  see  it;  and  your 
bridle  is  hung  with  bells  to  tell  you  of  its  presence. 

Your  captain  is  a  very  different  person,  in  relation  to  his 
officers,  from  the  colonel  of  a  regiment;  he  is  a  demi-god,  a 
Dalai  lama,  living  in  solitary  state;  sublime,  unapproachable; 
and  the  radiation  of  his  dignity  stretches  through  all  the  other 
members  of  the  nautical  hierarchy;  hence  all  sorts  of  petty 
intrigues,  disputes,  grumblings,  and  jealousies,  which,  to  the 
irreverent  eye  of  an  "idler,"  give  to  the  whole  little  society 
the  aspect  of  nothing  so  much  as  the  court  of  Prinz  Irenaeus  in 
Kater  Murr's  inestimable  autobiography. 

P.  107  sq. : 

After  describing  the  illusory  promises  of  the  Admiralty 
and  their  grudging  spirit  towards  the  scientific  members  of 
the  expedition,  he  continues : — 

Tliese  are  the  facilities  and  encouragement  to  science 
afforded  by  the  Admiralty;  and  it  cannot  be  wondered  at  if 
the  same  spirit  runs  through  its  subordinate  officers. 


ia48  SCIENCE  AT  SEA  53 

Not  that  there  is  any  active  opposition— quite  the  reverse. 
But  it  is  a  curious  fact,  that  if  you  want  a  boat  for  dredging,  ten 
chances  to  one  they  are  always  actually  or  potentially  otherwise 
disposed  of;  if  you  leave  your  towing-net  trailing  astern  in 
search  of  new  creatures,  in  some  promising  patch  of  discoloured 
water,  it  is,  in  all  probability,  found  to  have  a  wonderful  effect 
in  stopping  the  ship's  way,  and  is  hauled  in  as  soon  as  your  back 
is  turned;  or  a  careful  dissection  waiting  to  be  drawn  may  find 
its  way  overboard  as  a  "  mess." 

The  singular  disrespect  with  which  the  majority  of  naval 
officers  regard  everything  that  lies  beyond  the  sphere  of  routine, 
tends  to  produce  a  tone  of  feeling  very  unfavourable  to  scientific 
exertions.  How  can  it  be  otherwise,  in  fact,  with  men  who, 
from  the  age  of  thirteen,  meet  with  no  influence  but  that  which 
teaches  them  that  the  ''Queen's  regulations  and  instructions" 
are  the  law  and  the  prophets,  and  something  more  ? 

It  may  be  said,  without  fear  of  contradiction,  that  in  time  of 
peace  the  only  vessels  which  are  engaged  in  services  involving 
any  real  hardship  or  danger  are  those  employed  upon  the  various 
surveys ;  and  yet  the  men  of  easy  routine — iiarbour  heroes — ^the 
officers  of  regular  men-of-war,  as  they  delight  to  be  called,  pre- 
tend to  think  surveying  a  kind  of  shirking — in  sea-phrase, 
"  sloping."  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  officers  of  the  survey- 
ing vessels  themselves  are  too  often  imbued  with  the  same 
spirit;  and  though,  for  shame's  sake,  they  can  but  stand  up  for 
'hydrography,  they  are  too  apt  to  think  an  alliance  with  other 
branches  of  science  as  beneath  the  dignity  of  their  divinity — the 
"  Service." 

P.  112: 

Any  adventures  ashore  were  mere  oases,  separated  by  whole 
deserts  of  the  most  wearisome  ennui.  For  weeks,  perhaps,  those 
who  were  not  fortunate  enough  to  be  living  hard  and  getting 
fatigued  every  day  in  the  boats  were  yawning  away  their  exist- 
ence in  an  atmosphere  only  comparable  to  that  of  an  orchid- 
house,  a  life  in  view  of  which  that  of  Mariana  in  the  moated 
grange  has  its  attractions. 

For  instance,  consider  this  extract  from  the  journal  of  one 
of  the  officers,  date  August  1849: — 

"  Rain !  rain !  encore  et  toujours — I  wonder  if  it  is  possible 
tor  the  mind  of  man  to  conceive  anything  more  degradingly 
offensive  than  the  condition  of  us  150  men,  shut  up  in  this 
wooden  box,  and  being  watered  with  hot  water,  as  we  are  now. 


54  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  iv 

It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  hot,  for  the  temperature  is  that  at 
which  people  at  home  commonly  take  a  hot  bath.  It  rains  so 
hard  that  we  have  caught  seven  tons  of  water  in  one  day,  and 
it  is  therefore  impossible  to  go  on  deck,  though,  if  one  did,  one's 
condition  would  not  be  much  improved.  A  hot  Scotch  mist 
covers  the  sea  and  hides  the  land,  so  that  no  surveying  can  be 
done;  moving  about  in  the  slightest  degree  causes  a  flood  of 
perspiration  to  pour  out;  all  energy  is  completely  gone,  and  if 
I  could  help  it  I  would  not  think  even ;  it's  too  hot.  The  rain . 
awnings  are  spread,  and  we  can  have  no  wind  sails  up;  if  we 
could,  there  is  not  a  breath  of  wind  to  fill  them;  and  conse- 
quently the  lower  and  main  decks  are  utterly  unventilated :  a 
sort  of  solution  of  man  in  steam  fills  them  from  end  to  end,  and 
surrounds  the  lights  with  a  lurid  halo.  It's  too  hot  to  sleep, 
and  my  sole  amusement  consists  in  watching  the  cockroaches, 
which  are  in  a  state  of  intense  excitement  and  happiness.  They 
manifest  these  feelings  in  a  very  remarkable  manner — a  sudden 
unanimous  impulse  seems  to  seize  the  obscene  thousands  which 
usually  lurk  hidden  in  the  corners  of  my  cabin.  Out  they  rush, 
helter-skelter,  and  run  over  me,  my  table,  and  my  desk ;  others, 
more  vigorous,  fly,  quite  regardless  of  consequences,  until  they 
hit  against  something,  upon  which,  half  spreading  their  wings, 
they  make  their  heads  a  pivot  and  spin  round  in  a  circle,  in  a 
manner  which  indicates  a  temporary  aberration  of  the  cock- 
roach mind.  It  is  these  outbreaks  alone  which  rouse  us  from 
our  lassitude.  Knocks  are  heard  resounding  on  all  sides,  and 
each  inhabitant  of  a  cabin,  armed  with  a  slipper,  is  seen  taking 
ample  revenge  upon  the  disturbers  of  his  rest  and  the  destroyers 
of  his  body  and  clothes." 

Here,  on  the  other  hand,  is  an  oasis,  a  bartering  scene  at 
Bruny  Island,  in  the  Louisiade: — 

"  We  landed  at  the  same  place  as  before,  and  this  time  the 
natives  ran  down  prancing  and  gesticulating.  Many  of  them 
had  garlands  of  green  leaves  round  their  heads,  knees,  and 
ankles;  some  wore  long  streamers  depending  from  their  arms 
and  ears  and  floating  in  the  wind  as  they  galloped  along,  shak- 
ing their  spears  and  prancing  just  as  boys  do  when  playing  at 
horses.  They  soon  surrounded  us,  shouting  *  Kelumai !  Ke- 
lumai!'  (their  word  for  iron),  and  offering  us  all  sorts  of 
things  in  exchange.  One  very  fine  athletic  man,  *  Kai-oo-why- 
who-at'  by  name,  was  perfectly  mad  to  get  an  axe,  and  very 
soon  comprehended  the  arrangements  that  were  made.  Mr. 
Brady  drew  ten  lines  on  the  sand  and  laid  an  axe  down  by  them, 


1^49  INCIDENT   AT   BRUNY   ISLAND  55 

giving  K (I  really  can't  write  that  long  name  all  over 

again)  to  understand  by  signs  that  when  there  was  a  *bahar' 
(yam)  on  every  mark  he  should  have  the  axe.  He  compre- 
hended directly,  and  bolted  off  as  fast  as  he  could  run,  soon 
returning  with  his  hands  full  of  yams,  which  he  deposited  one 
by  one  on  the  appropriate  lines;  then  fearful  lest  some  of  the 
others  should  do  him  out  of  the  axe,  he  caught  hold  of  Brady 
by  the  arm,  and  would  not  let  him  go  until  yams  enough  had 
been  brought  by  the  others  to  make  up  the  number,  and  the  axe 
was  handed  over  to  him. 

"  Then  was  there  a  yell  of  delight !  He  jumped  up  with  the 
axe,  flourished  it,  passed  it  to  his  companions,  tumbled  down 
and  rolled  over,  kicking  up  his  heels  in  the  air,  and  finally,  catch- 
ing hold  of  me,  we  had  a  grand  waltz,  with  various  poses 
plastiques,  for  about  a  quarter  of  a  mile.  I  daresay  he  was  un- 
sophisticated enough  to  imagine  that  I  was  filled  with  sym- 
pathetic joy,  but  I  grieve  to  say  that  I  was  taking  care  all  the 
while  to  direct  his  steps  towards  the  village,  which,  as  we  had 
as  yet  examined  none  of  their  houses,  I  was  most  desirous  of 
entering  under  my  friend's  sanction.  I  think  he  suspected  some- 
thing, for  he  looked  at  me  rather  dubiously  when  I  directed 
our  steps  towards  the  entrance  in  the  bush  which  led  to  the 
houses,  and  wanted  me  to  go  back;  but  I  was  urgent,  so  he 
gave  way,  and  we  both  entered  the  open  space,  where  we  were 
joined  by  two  or  three  others,  and  sat  down  under  a  cocoa- 
nut  tree. 

"  I  persuaded  him  to  sit  for  his  portrait  (taking  care  first 
that  my  back  was  against  the  tree  and  my  pistols  handy),  and 
we  ate  green  cocoanuts  together,  at  last  attaining  to  so  great  a 
pitch  of  intimacy  that  he  made  me  change  names  with  him, 
calling  himself  *  Tamoo '  (my  Cape  York  name),  and  giving  me 
to  understand  that  I  wa^  to  take  his  own  lengthy  appellation. 
When  I  did  so,  and  talked  to  him  as  '  Tamoo,*  nothing  could 
exceed  the  delight  of  all  around;  they  patted  me  as  you  would 
a  child,  and  evidently  said  to  one  another,  *  This  really  seems 
to  be  a  very  intelligent  white  fellow.' 

"  Like  the  Cape  York  natives,  they  were  immensely  curious 
to  look  at  one's  legs,  asking  permission,  very  gently  but  very 
pressingly,  to  pull  up  the  trouser,  spanning  the  calf  with  their 
hands,  drawing  in  their  breath  and  making  big  eyes  all  the 
while.  Once,  when  the  front  of  my  shirt  blew  open,  and  they 
saw  the  white  skin  of  my  chest,  they  set  up  an  universal  shout. 
I  imagine  that  as  they  paint  their  faces  black,  they  fancied  that 


56  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  iv 

we  ingeniously  coloured  ours  white,  and  were  astonished  to 
see  that  we  were  really  of  that  (to  them)  disgusting  tint  all 
over." 

On  May  2,  1850,  the  Rattlesnake  sailed  for  the  last  time 
out  of  Sydney  harbour,  bound  for  England  by  way  of  the 
Horn.  In  spite  of  his  cheerful  anticipations,  Huxley  was 
not  to  see  his  future  wife  again  for  five  years  more,  when  he 
was  at  length  in  a  position  to  bid  her  come  and  join  him. 
During  the  three  years  of  their  engagement  in  Australia, 
they  had  at  least  been  able  to  see  each  other  at  intervals, 
and  to  be  together  for  months  at  a  time.  In  the  long 
periods  of  absence,  also,  they  had  invented  a  device  to  cheat 
the  sense  of  separation.  Each  kept  a  particular  journal,  to 
be  exchanged  when  they  met  again,  and  only  to  be  read, 
day  by  day,  during  the  next  voyage.  But  now  it  was 
very  different,  their  only  means  of  communication  being  the 
slow  agency  of  the  post,  beset  with  endless  possibilities  of 
misunderstanding  when  it  brought  belated  answers  to  ques- 
tions already  months  old  and  out  of  date  in  the  changed 
aspect  of  circumstances.  These  perils,  however,  they 
weathered,  and  it  proves  how  deep  in  the  moral  nature  of 
each  the  bond  between  them  was  rooted,  that  in  the  end 
they  passed  safely  through  the  still  greater  danger  of  im- 
perceptibly growing  estranged  from  one  another  under  the 
influences  of  such  utterly  different  surroundings. 

A  kindly  storm  which  forced  the  old  ship  to  put  into 
the  Bay  of  Islands  to  repair  a  number  of  small  leaks  that 
rendered  the  lower  deck  uninhabitable,  made  it  possible  for 
Huxley  to  send  back  a  l^ter  that  should  reach  Australia 
in  one  month  instead  of  ten  after  his  departure. 

He  utilized  a  week's  stay  here  characteristically  enough 
in  an  expedition  to  Waimate,  the  chief  missionary  station 
and  the  school  of  the  native  institutions  (a  sort  of  Normal 
School  for  native  teachers),  in  order  to  judge  of  his  own 
inspection  what  missionary  life  was  like. 

I  have  been  greatly  surprised  in  these  good  people  (he 
writes).  I  had  expected  a  good  deal  of  straight-hairedness  (if 
you  understand  the  phrase)  and  methodistical  puritanism,  but 
I  find  it  quite  otherwise.     Both  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Burrows  seem 


i850  THE   FALKLAND   ISLANDS 


57 


very  quiet  and  unpretending — straightforward  folks  desirous  of 
doing  their  best  for  the  people  among  whom  they  are  placed. 

One  touch  must  not  be  allowed  to  pass  unnoticed  in 
his  appreciation  of  the  missionaries'  unstudied  welcome  to 
the  belated  travellers,  whose  proper  host  was  unable  to  take 
them  in : — "  tea  unlimited  and  a  blazing  fire,  together  with 
a  very  nice  cat.*' 

By  July  12,  midwinter  of  course  in  the  southern  hemi- 
sphere, they  had  rounded  the  Horn,  and  Huxley  writes  f'-om 
that  most  desolate  of  British  possessions,  the  Falkland 
Islands : — 

I  have  great  hopes  of  being  able  to  send  a  letter  to  you,  rta 
California,  even  from  this  remote  corner  of  the  world.  It  is  the 
Ultima  Thule  and  no  mistake.  Fancy  two  good-sized  islands 
with  undulated  surface  and  sometimes  elevated  hills,  but  with- 
out tree  or  bush  as  tall  as  a  man.  When  we  arrived  the  8th 
inst.  the  barren  uniformity  was  rendered  still  more  obvious  by 
the  deep  coating  of  snow  which  enveloped  everything.  How 
can  I  describe  to  you  "  Stanley,"  the  sole  town,  metropolis,  and 
seat  of  government  ?  It  consists  of  a  lot  of  black,  low,  weather- 
board houses  scattered  along  the  hillsides  which  rise  round  the 
harbour.  One  barnlike  place  is  Government  House,  another  the 
pensioners'  barracks,  rendered  imposing  by  four  field-pieces  in 
front ;  others  smaller  are  the  residences  of  the  colonel,  surgeon, 
etc.  In  one  particularly  black  and  unpromising-looking  house 
lives  a  Mrs.  Sullivan  (sic)  the  wife  of  Captain  Sullivan,*  who 
surveyed  these  islands,  and  has  settled  out  here.  I  asked  myself 
if  I  could  have  had  the  heart  to  bring  you  to  such  a  desolate 
place,  and  myself  said  "  No."  However,  I  believe  she  is  very 
happy  with  her  children.  Sullivan  is  a  fine  energetic  man,  so 
I  suppose  if  she  loves  him,  well  and  good,  and  fancies  (is  she 
not  a  silly  woman?)  that  she  has  her  reward.  Mrs.  Stanley 
has  gone  to  stay  with  them  while  the  ship  remains  here,  and  I 

*  Captain  Sullivan,  who  sailed  with  Darwin  in  the  Beagle^  and 
served  with  great  distinction  in  command  of  the  southern  division  of 
the' fleet  in  the  battle  of  Obligado  (Plate  River),  had  surveyed  the  Falk- 
land Islands  many  years  before  his  temporary  settlement  there.  Dur- 
ing the  Crimean  War  he  was  sun^eying  oflicer  to  the  Baltic  fleet,  and 
afterwards  naval  adviser  to  the  Board  of  Trade.  He  was  afterwards 
Admiral  and  K.C.B. 


58  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  iv 

think  I  shall  go  and  look  them  up  under  pretence  of  making  a 
call.  They  say  that  the  present  winter  is  far  more  savage  than 
the  generality  of  Falkland  Island  winters,  and  it  had  need  be, 
for  I  never  felt  anything  so  bitterly  cold  in  my  life.  The  ther- 
mometer has  been  down  below  22,  and  shallow  parts  of  the  har- 
bour even  have  frozen.  Nothing  to  be  done  ashore.  My  rifle 
lies  idle  in  its  case;  no  chance  of  a  shot  at  a  bull,  and  one  has  to 
go  away  20  miles  to  get  hold  even  of  the  upland  geese  and 
rabbits.  The  only  thing  to  be  done  is  to  eat,  eat,  eat,  and  the 
cold  assists  one  wonderfully  in  that  operation.  You  consume 
a  pound  or  so  of  beefsteaks  at  breakfast  and  then  walk  the 
deck  for  an  appetite  at  dinner,  when  you  take  another  pound  or 
two  of  beef  or  a  goose,  or  some  such  trifle.  By  four  o'clock  it 
is  dark  night,  and  as  it  is  too  cold  to  read  the  only  thing  to  be 
done  is  to  vanish  under  blankets  as  soon  as  possible  and  take 
twelve  or  fourteen  hours'  sleep. 

Mrs.  Stanley's  Bougirigards,*  which  I  have  taken  under  my 
care  during  the  cold  weather,  admire  this  sort  of  thing  exceed- 
ingly and  thrive  under  it,  so  I  suppose  I  ought  to. 

The  journey  from  New  Zealand  here  has  been  upon  the 
whole  favourable;  no  gales— quite  the  reverse — but  light  vari- 
able winds  and  calms.  The  latter  part  of  our  voyage  has,  how- 
ever, been  very  cold,  snow  falling  in  abundance,  and  the  ice 
forming  great  stalactites  about  our  bows.  We  have  seen  no 
icebergs  nor  anything  remarkable.  From  all  I  can  learn  it  is 
most  probable  that  we  shall  leave  in  about  a  week  and  shall  go 
direct  to  England  without  stopping  at  any  other  port.  I  wish 
it  may  be  so.    I  want  to  get  home  and  look  about  me. 

We  have  had  news  up  to  the  end  of  March.  There  is  noth- 
ing of  any  importance  going  on.  By  the  Navy  list  for  April  I 
see  that  I  shall  be  as  nearly  as  possible  in  the  middle  of  those 
of  my  own  rank,  i.e,  I  shall  have  about  150  above  and  as  many 
below  me.  This  is  about  what  I  ought  to  expect  in  the  ordinary 
run  of  promotion  in  eight  years,  and  I  have  served  four  and  a 
half  of  that  time.  I  don't  expect  much  in  the  way  of  promotion, 
especially  in  these  economic  times;  but  I  do  not  fear  that  I 
shall  be  able  to  keep  me  in  England  for  at  least  a  year  after 
our  arrival,  in  order  to  publish  my  papers.  The  Admiralty 
have  quite  recently  published  a  distinct  declaration  that  they 
will  consider  scientific  attainments  as  a  claim  to  their  notice, 
and  I  expect  to  be  the  first  to  remind  them  of  their  promise,  and 

♦  The  Australian  love-bird ;  a  small  parrakeet. 


i85o  THE  LAST  OF  THE   FALKLANDS  59 

I  will  take  care  to  have  the  reminder  so  backed  that  they  must 
and  shall  take  note  of  it.  Even  if  they  will  not  promote  me  at 
once,  it  would  answer  our  purpose  to  have  an  appointment  to 
some  ship  on  the  home  station  for  a  short  time. 

The  last  of  the  Falklands  was  seen  on  July  25;  the 
line  was  crossed  in  thirty-six  days;  another  month,  and 
water  running  short,  it  was  found  necessary  to  put  in  at 
the  Azores  for  a  week.  Leaving  Fayal  on  October  5,  the 
Rattlesnake  reached  Plymouth  on  the  23rd,  but  next  day 
proceeded  to  Chatham,  which,  thanks  to  bafHing  winds, 
was  not  reached  till  November  9,  when  the  ship  was  paid 
off. 


CHAPTER   V 

1850-1851 

In  the  Huxley  Lecture  for  1898  (Times,  October  4)  Pro- 
fessor Virchow  takes  occasion  to  speak  of  the  effect  of 
Huxley's  service  in  the  Rattlesnake  upon  his  intellectual  de- 
velopment : — 

When  Huxley  himself  left  Charing  Cross  Hospital  in  1846. 
he  had  enjoyed  a  rich  measure  of  instruction  in  anatomy  and 
physiology.  Thus  trained,  he  took  the  post  of  naval  surgeon, 
and  by  the  time  that  he  returned,  four  years  later,  he  had 
become  a  perfect  zoologist  and  a  keen-sighted  ethnologist.  How 
this  was  possible  any  one  will  readily  understand  who  knows 
from  his  own  experience  how  great  the  value  of  personal  ob- 
servation is  for  the  development  of  independent  and  unpreju- 
diced thought  For  a  young  man  who,  besides  collecting  a  rich 
treasure  of  positive  knowledge,  has  practised  dissection  and 
the  exercise  of  a  critical  judgment,  a  long  sea-voyage  and  a 
peaceful  sojourn  among  entirely  new  surroundings  afford  an  in- 
valuable opportunity  for  original  work  and  deep  reflection. 
Freed  from  the  formalism  of  the  schools,  thrown  upon  the  use 
of  his  own  intellect,  compelled  to  test  each  single  object  as 
regards  properties  and  history,  he  soon  forgets  the  dogmas  of 
the  prevailing  system  and  becomes,  first  a  sceptic,  and  then  an 
investigator.  This  change,  which  did  not  fail  to  affect  Huxley, 
and  through  which  arose  that  Huxley  whom  we  commemorate 
to-day,  is  no  unknown  occurrence  to  one  who  is  acquainted  with 
the  history,  not  only  of  knowledge,  but  also  of  scholars. 

But  he  was  not  destined  to  find  his  subsequent  path 
easy.    Once  in  England,  indeed,  he  did  not  lose  any  time. 
No  sooner  had  the  Rattlesnake  touched  at  Plymouth  than 
60 


1850  SCIENTIFIC   RESULTS  OF   THE  VOYAGE  61 

Commander  Yule,  who  had  succeeded  Captain  Stanley  in 
the  command  of  the  ship,  wrote  to  the  head  of  the  Naval 
Medical  Department  stating  the  circumstances  under  which 
Huxley's  zoological  investigations  had  been  undertaken,  and 
asking  the  sanction  of  the  Admiralty  for  their  publication. 
The  hydrographer,  in  sending  the  formal  permission,  says : — 

But  I  have  to  add  that  their  Lordships  will  not  allow  any 
charge  to  be  made  upon  the  public  funds  towards  the  expense. 
You  will,  however,  further  assure  Mr.  Huxley  that  any  assist- 
ance that  can  be  supplied  from  this  office  shall  be  most  cheer- 
fully given  to  him,  and  that  I  heartily  hope,  from  the  capacity 
and  taste  for  scientific  investigation  for  which  you  give  him 
credit,  that  he  will  produce  a  work  alike  creditable  to  himself, 
to  his  late  Captain,  by  whom  he  was  selected  for  it,  and  to  Her 
Majesty's  service. 

Personally,  the  hydrographer  took  a  great  interest  in 
science ;  but  as  for  the  department,  Huxley  somewhat  bit- 
terly interpreted  the  official  meaning  of  this  well-sounding 
flourish  to  be  made :  "  Publish  if  you  can,  and  give  us  credit 
for  granting  every  facility  except  the  one  means  of  pub- 
lishing." 

Happily  there  was  another  way  of  publishing,  if  the 
Admiralty  would  grant  him  time  to  arrange  his  papers  and 
superintend  their  publication.  The  Royal  Society  had  at 
their  disposal  an  annual  grant  of  money  for  the  publication 
of  scientific  works.  If  the  Government  would  not  con- 
tribute directly  to  publish  the  researches  made  under  their 
auspices,  the  favourable  reception  which  his  preliminary 
papers  had  met  with  led  Huxley  to  hope  that  his  greater 
work  would  be  undertaken  by  the  Royal  Society.  If  the 
leading  men  of  science  attested  the  value  of  his  work,  the 
Admiralty  might  be  induced  to  let  him  stay  in  England  with 
the  nominal  appointment  as  assistant  surgeon  to  H.M.S. 
Fisguard  at  Woolwich,  for  "  particular  service,"  but  with 
leave  of  absence  from  the  ship  so  that  he  could  live  and 
pursue  his  avocations  in  London.  There  was  a  precedent 
for  this  course  in  the  case  of  Dr.  Hooker,  when  he  had  to 
work  out  the  scientific  results  of  the  voyage  of  the  Erebus 
and  Terror. 


62  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  v 

In  this  design  he  was  fortified  by  his  old  Haslar  friend, 
Dr.  (afterwards  Sir  John)  Watt  Reid,  who  wrote :  "  They 
cannot,  and,  I  am  sure,  will  not  wish  to  stand  in  your  way 
at  Whitehall."  Meanwhile,  the  first  person,  naturally,  he 
had  thought  of  consulting  was  his  old  chief.  Sir  John 
Richardson,  who  had  g^eat  weight  at  the  Admiralty,  and  to 
him  he  wrote  the  following  letter  before  leaving  Plymouth. 


To  Sir  John  Richardson 

(?<•/.  31,  1850. 

I  regret  very  much  that  in  consequence  of  our  being  ordered 
to  be  paid  oflf  at  Chatham,  instead  of  Portsmouth,  as  we  always 
hoped  and  expected,  I  shall  be  unable  to  submit  to  your  inspec- 
tion the  zoological  notes  and  drawings  which  I  have  made  dur- 
ing our  cruise.  They  are  somewhat  numerous  (over  180  sheets 
of  drawings),  and  I  hope  not  altogether  valueless,  since  they 
have  been  made  with  as  great  care  and  attention  as  I  am  master 
of — and  with  a  microscope,  such  as  has  rarely,  if  ever,  made  a 
voyage  round  the  world  before.  A  further  reason  for  indulging 
in  this  hope  consists  in  the  fact  that  they  relate  for  the  most 
part  to  animals  hitherto  very  little  known,  whether  from  their 
rarity  or  from  their  perishable  nature,  and  that  they  bear  upon 
many  curious  physiological  points. 

I  may  thus  classify  and  enumerate  the  observations  I  have 
made — 

1.  Upon  the  organs  of  hearing  and  circulation  in  some  of  the 
transparent  Crustacea,  and  upon  the  structure  of  certain  of  the 
lower  forms  of  Crustacea. 

2.  Upon  some  very  remarkable  new  forms  of  Annelids,  and 
especially  upon  the  much  contested  genus  Sagitta,  which  I  have 
evidence  to  show  is  neither  a  Mollusc  nor  an  Epizoon,  but  an 
Annelid. 

3.  Upon  the  nervous  system  of  certain  Mollusca  hitherto  im- 
perfectly described — upon  what  appears  to  me  to  be  an  urinary 
organ  in  many  of  them — ^and  upon  the  structure  of  Firola  and 
Atlanta,  of  which  latter  I  have  a  pretty  complete  account. 

4.  Upon  two  perfectly  new  (ordinally  new)  species  of 
Ascidians. 

5.  Upon  Pyrosoma  and  Salpa.  The  former  has  never  been 
described  (I  think)  since  Savigny's  time,  and  he  had  only  speci- 
mens preserved  in  spirits.    I  have  a  great  deal  to  add  and  alter. 


i85o  HIS  SCIENTIFIC  WORK  63 

Then  as  to  Salpa,  whose  mode  of  generation  has  always  been 
so  great  a  bone  of  contention,  I  have  a  long  series  of  observa- 
tions and  drawings  which  I  have  verified  over  and  over  again, 
and  which,  if  correct,  must  give  rise  to  quite  a  new  view  of  the 
matter.  I  may  mention  as  an  interesting  fact  that  in  these 
animals  so  low  in  the  scale  I  have  found  a  placental  circulation, 
rudimentary  indeed,  but  nevertheless  a  perfect  model  on  a  small 
scale  of  that  which  takes  place  in  the  mammalia. 

6.  I  have  the  materials  for  a  monograph  upon  the  Acalephae 
and  Hydrostatic  Acalephae.  I  have  examined  very  carefully  more 
than  forty  genera  of  these  animals — many  of  them  very  rare,  and 
some  quite  new.  But  I  paid  comparatively  little  attention  to  the 
collection  of  new  species,  caring  rather  to  come  to  some  clear 
and  definite  idea  as  to  the  structure  of  those  which  had  indeed 
been  long  known,  but  very  little  understood.  Unfortunately  for 
science,  but  fortunately  for  me,  this  method  appears  to  have  been 
somewhat  novel  with  observers  of  these  animals,  and  conse- 
quently everywhere  new  and  remarkable  facts  were  to  be  had 
for  the  picking  up. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  one  could  occupy  one's  self  with 
the  animals  for  so  long  without  coming  to  some  conclusion  as  to 
their  systematic  place,  however  subsidiary  to  observation  such 
considerations  must  always  be  regarded,  and  it  seems  to  me 
(although  on  such  matters  I  can  of  course  only  speak  with 
the  greatest  hesitation)  that  just  as  the  more  minute  and  careful 
observations  made  upon  the  old  "  Vermes  "  of  Linnaeus  neces- 
sitated the  breaking  up  of  that  class  into  several  very  distinct 
classes,  so  more  careful  investigation  requires  the  breaking  up 
of  Cuvier's  "  Radiata  "  (which  succeeded  the  "  Vermes  "  as  a 
sort  of  zoological  lumber-room)  into  several  very  distinct  and 
well-defined  new  classes,  of  which  the  Acalephae,  Hydrostatic 
Acalephae,  actinoid  and  hydroid  polypes,  will  form  one.  But  I 
fear  that  I  am  trespassing  beyond  the  limits  of  a  letter.  I  have 
only  wished  to  state  what  I  have  done  in  order  that  you  may 
judge  concerning  the  propriety  or  impropriety  of  what  I  propose 
to  do.  And  I  trust  that  you  will  not  think  that  I  am  presuming 
too  much  upon  your  kindness  if  I  take  the  liberty  of  thus  asking 
your  advice  about  my  own  affairs.  In  truth,  I  feel  in  a  manner 
responsible  to  you  for  the  use  of  the  appointment  you  procured 
for  me;  and  furthermore,  Capt.  Stanley's  unfortunate  decease 
has  left  the  interests  of  the  ship  in  general  and  my  own  in  par- 
ticular without  a  representative. 

Can  you  inform  me,  then,  what  chance  I  should  have  either 


64  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  v 

(i)  of  procuring  a  grant  for  the  publication  of  my  papers,  or 
(2)  should  that  not  be  feasible,  to  obtain  a  nominal  appointment 
(say  to  the  Fis guard  at  Woolwich,  as  in  Dr.  Hooker's  case)  for 
such  time  as  might  be  requisite  for  the  publication  of  my  papers 
and  drawings  in  some  other  way  ? 

I  shall  see  Professors  Owen  and  Forbes  when  I  reach  Lon- 
don, and  I  have  a  letter  of  introduction  to  Sir  John  Herschel 
(who  has,  I  hear,  a  great  penchant  for  the  towing-net).  Sup- 
posing I  could  do  so,  would  it  be  of  any  use  to  procure  recom- 
mendations from  them  that  my  papers  should  be  published? 

[(Half-erased)  To  Sir  F.  Beaufort  also  I  have  a  letter.] 
Would  it  not  be  proper  also  to  write  to  Sir  W.  Burnett  acquaint- 
ing him  with  my  views,  and  requesting  his  acquiescence  and 
assistance  ? 

Begging  an  answer  at  your  earliest  convenience,  addressed 
either  to  the  Rattlesnake  or  to  my  brother,  I  remain,  your 
obedient  servant,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

41  North  Bank. 

He  received  a  most  friendly  reply  from  **  Old  John." 
He  was  willing  to  do  all  in  his  power  to  help,  but  could 
recommend  Government  aid  better  if  he  had  seen  the  draw- 
ings. Meantime  a  certificate  should  be  got  from  Forbes, 
the  best  man  in  this  particular  branch  of  science,  backed,  if 
possible,  by  Owen.  He  would  speak  to  some  officials  him- 
self, and  give  Huxley  introductions  to  others,  and  if  he 
could  get  up  to  town,  would  try  to  see  the  collections  and 
add  his  name  to  the  certificate. 

Both  Forbes  and  Owen  were  ready  to  help.  The  former 
wrote  a  most  encouraging  letter,  singling  out  the  character- 
istics which  gave  a  peculiar  value  to  these  papers : — 

I  have  had  very  great  pleasure  in  examining  your  drawings 
of  animals  observed  during  the  voyage  of  the  Rattlesnake,  and 
have  also  fully  availed  myself  of  the  opportunity  of  going  over 
the  collections  made  during  the  course  of  the  survey  upon  which 
you  have  been  engaged.  I  can  say  without  exaggeration  that 
more  important  or  more  complete  zoological  researches  have 
never  been  conducted  during  any  voyage  of  discovery  in  the 
southern  hemisphere.  The  course  you  have  taken  of  directing 
your  attention  mainly  to  impreservable  creatures,  and  to  those 
orders  of  the  animal  kingdom  respecting  which  we  have  least 


i85o  CHARACTER  OF   HIS  SCIENTIFIC  WORK  6$ 

information,  and  the  care  and  skill  with  which  you  have  con- 
ducted elaborate  dissections  and  microscopic  examinations  of 
the  curious  creatures  you  were  so  fortunate  as  to  meet  with, 
necessarily  gives  a  peculiar  and  unique  character  to  your  re- 
searches, since  thereby  they  fill  up  gaps  in  our  knowledge  of 
the  animal  kingdom.  This  is  the  more  important,  since  such 
researches  have  been  almost  always  neglected  during  voyages  of 
discovery.  The  value  of  some  of  your  notes  was  publicly  ac- 
knowledged during  your  absence,  when  your  memoir  on  the 
structure  of  the  Medusae,  communicated  to  the  Royal  Society, 
was  singled  out  for  publication  in  the  Philosophical  Transac- 
tions. It  would  be  a  very  great  loss  to  science  if  the  mass  of 
new  matter  and  fresh  observation  which  you  have  accumulated 
were  not  to  be  worked  out  and  fully  published,  as  well  as  an 
injustice  to  the  merits  of  the  expedition  in  which  you  have 
served. 

The  latter  offered  to  write  to  the  Admiralty  on  his  behalf, 
giving  the  weight  of  his  name  to  the  suggestion  that  the 
work  to  be  done  would  take  at  least  twelve  months,  and  that 
therefore  his  appointment  to  the  Fisguard  should  not  be 
limited  to  any  less  period.  **  They  might  be  disposed," 
wrote  Huxley  to  him,  "  to  cut  anything  I  request  down — on 
principle."  Moreover,  Owen,  Forbes,  Bell,  and  Sharpey,  all 
members  of  the  Committee  of  Recommendation  of  the 
Royal  Society,  had  expressed  themselves  so  favourably  to 
his  views  that  in  his  application  he  was  able  to  relieve  the 
economic  scruples  of  the  Admiralty  by  telling  them  that  he 
had  a  means  of  publishing  his  papers  through  the  Royal 
Society. 

The  result  of  his  application,  thus  backed,  was  that  he 
obtained  his  appointment  on  November  29.  It  was  for  six 
months,  subject  to  extension  if  he  were  able  to  report  satis- 
factory progress  with  his  work. 

A  long  letter  to  his  sister,  now  settled  in  Tennessee, 
gives  a  good  idea  of  his  aims  and  hopes  at  this  time. 

41  North  Bank,  Regent's  Park, 
Nov,  21,  1850. 
My  dearest  Lizzie — We  have  been  at  home  now  nearly 
three  weeks,  and  I  have  been  a  free  man  again  twelve  days. 
Her  Majesty's  ships  have  been  paid  off  on  the  9th  of  this  month. 


66  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  v 

Properly  speaking,  indeed,  we  have  been  at  home  longer,  for 
we  touched  at  Plymouth  and  trod  English  ground  and  saw  Eng- 
lish green  fields  on  the  23rd  of  October,  but  we  were  allowed 
to  remain  only  twenty-four  hours,  and  to  my  great  disgust  were 
ordered  round  to  Chatham  to  be  paid  off.  The  ill-luck  which 
had  made  our  voyage  homeward  so  long  (we  sailed  from  Syd- 
ney on  the  2nd  of  May)  pursued  us  in  the  Channel,  and  we  did 
not  reach  Chatham  until  the  2nd  of  November ;  and  what  do  you 
think  was  one  of  the  first  things  I  did  when  we  reached  Plym- 
outh? Wrote  to  Eliza  K.  asking  news  of  a  certain  naughty 
sister  of  mine,  from  whom  I  had  never  heard  a  word  since  we 
had  been  away — and  if  perchance  there  should  be  any  letter, 
^&g*"g?  her  to  forward  it  immediately  to  Chatham.  And  so, 
when  at  length  we  got  there,  I  found  your  kind  long  letter  had 
been  in  England  some  six  or  seven  months;  but  hearing  of  the 
likelihood  of  our  return,  they  had  very  judiciously  not  sent  it 
to  me. 

Your  letter,  my  poor  Lizzie,  justifies  many  a  heartache  I 
have  had  when  thinking  over  your  lot,  knowing,  as  I  well  do, 
what  emigrant  life  is  in  climates  less  tr)ring  than  that  in  which 
you  live.  I  have  seen  a  good  deal  of  bush  life  in  Australia,  and 
it  enables  me  fully  to  sympathise  with  and  enter  into  every 
particular  you  tell  me — from  the  baking  and  boiling  and  pigs 
squealing,  down  to  that  ferocious  landshark  Mrs.  Gunther,  of 
whose  class  Australia  will  furnish  fine  specimens.  Had  I  been 
at  home,  too,  I  could  have  enlightened  the  good  folks  as  to  the 
means  of  carnage  in  the  colonies,  and  could  have  told  them 
that  the  two  or  twenty  thousand  miles  over  sea  is  the  smallest 
part  of  the  diflSculty  and  expense  of  getting  anything  to  people 
living  inland;  as  it  is,  I  think  I  have  done  some  good  in  the 
matter ;  their  meaning  was  good  but  their  discretion  small.  But 
the  obtuseness  of  English  in  general  about  anything  out  of  the 
immediate  circle  of  their  owa  experience  is  something  won- 
derful. 

I  had  heard  here  and  there  fractional  accounts  of  your 
doings  from  Eliza  K.  and  my  mother — not  of  the  most  cheery 
description — and  therefore  I  was  right  glad  to  get  your  letter, 
which,  though  it  tells  of  sorrow  and  misfortune  enough  and  to 
spare,  yet  shows  me  that  the  brave  woman's  heart  you  always 
had,  my  dearest  Lizzie,  is  still  yours,  and  that  you  have  always 
had  the  warm  love  of  those  immediately  around  you,  and  now, 
as  the  doctor's  letter  tells  us,  you  have  one  more  source  of  joy 
and  happiness,  and  this  new  joy  must  efface  the  bitterness — 


i850  LETTER   TO   HIS  SISTER  (yj 

I  do  not  say  the  memory,  knowing  how  impossible  that  would 
be— of  your  great  loss.*  God  knows,  my  dear  sister,  I  could 
feel  for  you.  It  was  as  if  I  could  see  again  a  shadow  of  the 
great  sorrow  that  fell  upon  us  all  years  ago. 

Nothing  can  bind  me  more  closely  to  your  children  than  I 
am  already,  but  if  the  christening  be  not  all  over  you  must  let 
me  be  godfather ;  and  though  I  fear  I  am  too  much  of  a  heretic 
to  promise  to  bring  him  up  a  good  son  of  the  church — ^yet  should 
ever  the  position  which  you  prophesy,  and  of  which  I  have  an 
"Ahnung"  (though  I  don't  tell  that  to  anybody  but  Nettie), 
be  mine,  he  shall  (if  you  will  trust  him  to  me)  be  cared  for 
as  few  sons  are.  As  things  stand,  I  am  talking  half  nonsense, 
but  I  mean  it — and  you  know  of  old,  for  good  and  for  evil,  my 
tenacity  of  purpose. 

Now,  as  to  my  own  affairs — I  am  not  married.  Prudently, 
at  any  rate,  but  whether  wisely  or  foolishly  I  am  not  quite  sure 
yet,  Nettie  and  I  resolved  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  matrimony 
for  the  present  In  truth,  though  our  marriage  was  my  great 
wish  on  many  accounts,  yet  I  feared  to  bring  upon  her  the  con- 
sequences that  might  have  occurred  had  anything  happened  to 
me  within  th^  next  few  years.  We  had  a  sad  parting  enough, 
and  as  is  usually  the  case  with  me,  time,  instead  of  alleviating, 
renders  more  diss^eeable  our  separation.  I  have  a  woman's 
element  in  me.  I  hate  the  incessant  struggle  and  toil  to  cut  one 
another's  throat  among  us  men,  and  I  long  to  be  able  to  meet 
with  some  one  in  whom  I  can  place  implicit  confidence,  whose 
judgment  I  can  respect,  and  yet  who  will  not  laugh  at  my  most 
foolish  weaknesses,  and  in  whose  love  I  can  forget  all  care.  All 
these  conditions  I  have  fulfilled  in  Nettie.  With  a  strong  natu- 
ral intelligence,  and  knowledge  enough  to  understand  and  sym- 
pathise with  my  aims,  with  firmness  of  a  man,  when  necessary, 
she  combines  the  gentleness  of  a  very  woman  and  the  honest 
simplicity  of  a  child,  and  then  she  loves  me  well,  as  well  as  I 
love  her,  and  you  know  I  love  but  few — in  the  real  meaning  of 
the  word,  perhaps,  but  two — she  and  you.  And  now  she  is 
away,  and  you  are  away.  The  worst  of  it  is  I  have  no  ambition, 
except  as  means  to  an  end,  and  that  end  is  the  possession  of  a 
sufficient  income  to  marry  upon.  I  assure  you  I  would  not  give 
two  straws  for  all  the  honours  and  titles  in  the  world.  A  worker 
I  must  always  be — it  is  my  nature — ^but  if  I  had  £400  a  year  I 
would  never  let  my  name  appear  to  anything  I  did  or  shall  ever 

*  The  death  of  her  little  daughter  Jessie. 


68  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  v 

do.  It  would  be  glorious  to  be  a  voice  working  in  secret  and 
free  from  all  those  personal  motives  that  have  actuated  the  best. 
But,  unfortunately,  one  is  not  a  "  vox  et  praeterea  nihil,"  but 
with  a  considerable  corporality  attached  which  requires  feeding, 
and  so  while  my  inner  man  is  continually  indulging  in  these 
anchorite  reflections,  the  outer  is  sedulously  elbowing  and  push- 
ing as  if  he  dreamed  of  nothing  but  gold  medals  and  pro- 
fessors' caps. 

I  am  getting  on  very  well — better  I  fear  than  I  deserve. 
One  of  my  papers  was  published  in  1849  in  the  Philosophical 
Transactions,  another  in  the  Zoological  Transactions,  and  some 
more  may  be  published  in  the  Linnipan  if  I  like — ^but  I  think  I 
shall  not  like.  Then  I  have  worked  pretty  hard,  and  brought 
home  a  considerable  amount  of  drawings  and  notes  about  new 
or  rare  animals,  all  particularly  nasty  slimy  things,  and  they 
will  most  likely  be  published  as  a  separate  work  by  the  Roysd 
Society. 

Owens,  Forbes,  Bell,  and  Sharpey  (the  doctor  will  tell  you 
of  what  weight  these  names  are)  are  all  members  of  the  com- 
mittee which  disposes  of  the  money,  and  are  ajl  strongly  in 
favour  of  my  "valuable  researches"  (cock-a-doodle-doo!!) 
being  published  by  the  Society.  From  various  circumstances  I 
have  taken  a  better  position  than  I  could  have  expected  among 
these  grandees,  and  I  find  them  all  immensely  civil  and  ready  to 
help  me  on,  tooth  and  nail,  particularly  Prof.  Forbes,  who  is  a 
right  good  fellow,  and  has  taken  a  great  deal  of  trouble  on  my 
behalf.  Owen  volunteered  to  write  to  the  "  First  Lord "  on 
my  behalf,  and  did  so.  Sharpey,  when  I  saw  him,  reminded 
me,  as  he  always  does,  of  my  great  contest  with  Stocks*  (do 
you  remember  throwing  the  shoe?),  and  promised  me  all  the 
assistance  in  his  power.  Prof.  Bell,  who  is  secretary  to  the 
Royal,  and  has  great  influence,  promised  to  help  me  in  every 
way,  and  asked  me  to  dine  with  him  and  meet  a  lot  of  nobs. 
I  take  all  these  things  quite  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  am 
all  the  while  considerably  astonished.  The  other  day  I  dined 
at  the  Geological  Club  and  met  Lyell,  Murchison,  de  la  B[eche] 
Homer,  and  a  lot  more,  and  last  evening  I  dined  with  a  whole 
lot  of  literary  and  scientific  people. 

Owen  was,  in  my  estimation,  great,  from  the  fact  of  his 
smoking  his  cigar  and  singing  his  song  like  a  brick. 

I  tell  you  all  these  things  to  show  you  clearly  how  I  stand. 

♦  See  p.  19. 


i850  HIS  AIMS  AND   PROSPECTS  69 

I  am  under  no  one's  patronage,  nor  do  I  ever  mean  to  be.  I 
have  never  asked,  and  I  never  will  ask,  any  man  for  his  help 
from  mere  motives  of  friendship.  If  any  man  thinks  that  I  am 
capable  of  forwarding  the  great  cause  in  ever  so  small  a  way, 
let  him  just  give  me  a  helping  hand  and  I  will  thank  him,  but 
if  not,  he  is  doing  both  himself  and  me  harm  in  offering  it,  and 
if  it  should  be  necessary  for  me  to  find  public  expression  to  my 
thoughts  on  any  matter,  I  have  clearly  made  up  my  mind  to 
do  so,  without  allowing  myself  to  be  influenced  by  hope  of  gain 
or  weight  of  authority. 

There  are  many  nice  people  in  this  world  for  whose  praise  or 
blame  I  care  not  a  whistle.  I  don't  know  and  I  don't  care  whether 
I  shall  ever  be  what  is  called  a  great  man.    I  will  leave  my  mark 


somewhere,  and  it  shall  be  clear  and  distinct  T.  H.  H.,  his  mark. 

and  free  from  the  abominable  blur  of  cant,  humbug,  and  self- 
seeking  which  surrounds  everything  in  this  present  world — ^that 
is  to  say,  supposing  that  I  am  not  already  unconsciously  tainted 
myself,  a  result  of  which  I  have  a  morbid  dread.  I  am  perhaps 
overrating  myself.  You  must  put  me  in  mind  of  my  better 
self,  as  you  did  in  your  last  letter,  when  you  write. 

But  I  must  come  to  the  close  of  my  epistie,  as  I  have  one  to 
enclose  from  my  mother.  My  next  shall  be  longer,  and  I  hope  I 
shall  then  be  able  to  tell  you  what  I  am  doing.  At  any  rate  I 
hope  to  be  in  England  for  twelve  months. 

I  am  very  much  ashamed  of  myself  for  not  having  written  to 
you  for  so  long— open  confession  is  good  for  the  soul,  they  say, 
and  I  will  honestly  confess  that  I  was  half  puzzled,  half  piqued, 
and  altogether  sulky  at  your  not  having  answered  my  last  letter 
containing  my  love  story,  of  which  I  wrote  you  an  account  be- 
fore anybody.  You  must  not  suppose  my  affection  was  a  bit  the 
less  because  I  was  half  angry.  Nettie,  who  knows  you  well, 
could  tell  you  otherwise.  Indeed,  now  that  I  know  all,  I  con- 
sider myself  a  great  brute,  and  I  will  give  you  leave,  if  you  will 
but  write  soon,  to  scold  me  as  much  as  you  like.  All  the  family 
are  well.  My  father  is  the  only  one  who  is  much  altered,  and 
that  in  mind  and  strength,  not  in  bodily  health,  which  is  very 
good.  My  mother  has  lost  her  front  teeth,  but  is  otherwise  just 
the  same  amusing,  nervous,  distressingly  active  old  lady  she 
always  was. 

Our  cruisers  visit  New  Orleans  sometimes,  and  if  ever  I  am 
on  the  West  India  station,  who  knows,  I  may  take  a  run  up  to 
see  you  all.    Kindest  love  to  the  children.     Tell  Florry  that  I 


70 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  v 


could  not  get  her  the  bird  with  the  long  tail,  but  that  some  day 
I  will  send  her  some  pictures  of  copper-coloured  gentlemen  with 
great  big  wigs  and  no  trousers,  and  tell  her  her  old  uncle  loves 
her  very  much  and  never  forgets  her  nor  anybody  else. 

God  bless  you,  dearest  Lizzie.  Write  soon.  —  Ever  your 
brother,  Tom. 

Thus  within  a  month  of  landing  in  England,  Huxley 
had  secured  his  footing  in  the  scientific  world.  He  was 
freed  for  the  time  from  the  more  irksome  part  of  his  pro- 
fession; his  service  in  the  navy  had  become  a  stepping- 
stone  to  the  pursuits  in  which  his  heart  really  was.  He  had 
long  been  half  in  despair  over  the  work  which  he  had  sent 
out  like  the  dove  from  the  ark,  if  haply  it  might  find  him 
some  standing  ground  in  the  world;  no  news  of  it  had 
reached  him  till  he  was  about  to  start  on  his  homeward 
voyage,  but  he  returned  to  discover  that  at  a  single  stroke 
it  had  placed  him  in  the  front  rank  of  naturalists. 

41  North  Bank,  Regent's  Park, 
Jan,  3.  1851. 
My  progress  (he  writes),*  must  necessarily  be  slow  and  un- 
certain. I  cannot  see  two  steps  forwards.  Much  depends  upon 
myself,  much  upon  circumstances.  Hitherto  all  has  gone  as  well 
as  I  could  wish.  I  have  gained  each  object  that  I  had  set  before 
myself — that  is,  I  have  my  shore  appointment,  I  have  found  a 
means  of  publishing  what  I  have  done  creditably,  and  I  have 
continued  to  come  into  communication  with  some  of  the  first 
men  in  England  in  my  department  of  science.  But,  as  I  have 
found  to  be  the  case  in  all  things  that  are  gained,  from  money 
to  friendship,  it  is  not  so  much  getting  as  keeping.  It  is  by  no 
means  difficult  if  you  are  decently  introduced,  have  tolerably 
agreeable  manners,  and  some  smattering  of  science,  to  take  a 
position  among  these  folks,  but  it  is  a  mighty  different  affair  to 
keep  it  and  turn  it  to  account.  Not  like  the  man  who,  at  the 
Enchanted  Castle,  had  the  courage  to  blow  the  horn  but  not  to 
draw  the  sword,  and  was  consequently  shot  forth  from  the 
mouth  of  the  cave  by  which  he  entered  with  most  ignominious 
haste, — one  must  be  ready  to  fight  immediately  after  one's 
arrival  has  been  announced,  or  be  blown  into  oblivion. 

♦  When  not  otherwise  specified,  the  extracts  in  this  chapter  are  from 
letters  to  his  future  wife. 


i85i  EARLY  FRIENDS  71 

I  have  drawn  the  sword,  but  whether  I  am  in  truth  to  beat 
the  giants  and  deliver  my  princess  from  the  enchanted  castle  is 
yet  to  be  seen. 

For  several  months  he  lived  with  his  brother  George  and 
his  wife  at  North  Bank,  St.  John's  Wood  (the  house  was 
pulled  down  in  1896  for  the  Great  Central  Railway),  but  the 
surroundings  were  too  easy,  and  not  conducive  to  hard 
work. 

I  must,  I  fear,  emigrate  to  some  "two  pair  back,"  which 
shall  have  the  feel  and  manner  of  a  workshop,  where  I  can  leave 
my  books  about  and  dissect  a  marine  nastiness  if  I  think  fit, 
sallying  forth  to  meet  the  world  when  necessary,  and  giving  it 
no  more  time  than  necessary.  If  it  were  not  for  a  fear  that  P. 
would  take  it  unkindly  I  should  go  at  once.  I  must  summon  up 
moral  courage  somehow  (how  difficult  when  it  is  to  pain  those 
we  love !)  and  trust  to  her  good  sense  for  the  rest. 

And  later: — 

...  I  have  been  very  busy  looking  about  for  the  last  two 
days,  and  have  been  in  fifty  houses  if  I  have  been  in  one.  1 
want  some  place  with  a  decent  address,  cheap,  and  beyond  all 
things,  clean.  The  dirty  holes  that  some  of  these  lodgings  are  I 
such  tawdry  finery  and  such  servants,  with  their  faces  and  hands 
not  merely  dirty,  but  absolutely  macadamised.  And  they  all 
make  this  confounded  great  Exhibition  a  plea  for  about  doubling 
the  rent. 

So  in  April  185 1  he  removed  to  lodgings  hard  by,  at  i 
Hanover  Place,  Clarence  Gate,  Regent's  Park  ("  which 
sounds  grand,  but  means  nothing  more  than  a  sitting-room 
and  bedroom  in  a  small  house  "),  then  to  St.  Anne's  Gar- 
dens, and  after  that  to  Upper  York  Place,  while  making 
a  second  home  with  his  brother.  His  other  great  friends 
already  in  London  were  the  Fannings,  who  had  left  Aus- 
tralia a  few  months  before  his  own  return.  In  the  scientific 
world  he  soon  made  acquaintance  with  most  of  the  leading 
men,  and  began  a  close  friendship  with  Edward  Forbes,  with 
George  Busk  (then  surgeon  to  H.M.S.  Dreadnought  at 
Greenwich,  afterwards  President  of  the  College  of  Sur- 
geons) and  his  accomplished  wife,  and  later  in  the  year 
with  both  Hooker  and  Tyndall.  The  Busks,  indeed,  showed 
6 


72  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  v 

him  the  greatest  kindness  throughout  this  period  of  strug- 
gle, and  the  sympathy  and  intellectual  stimulus  he  received 
from  their  society  were  of  the  utmost  help.  They  were  al- 
ways ready  to  welcome  him  at  Greenwich,  and  he  not  only 
often  ran  down  there  for  a  week-end,  but  would  spend  part 
of  his  vacations  with  them  at  Lowestoft  or  Tenby,  where 
naturalists  could  find  plenty  of  occupation. 

But  from  a  worldly  point  of  view,  it  was  too  soon  clear 
that  science  was  sadly  unprofitable.  There  seemed  no 
speedy  prospect  of  making  enough  to  marfy  on.  As  early 
as  March  185 1  he  writes: — 

The  difficulties  of  obtaining  a  decent  position  in  England  in 
anything  like  a  reasonable  time  seem  to  me  greater  than  ever 
they  were.  To  attempt  to  live  by  any  scientific  pursuit  is  a 
farce.  Nothing  but  what  is  absolutely  practical  will  go  down 
in  England.  A  man  of  science  may  earn  great  distinction,  but 
not  bread.  He  will  get  invitations  to  all  sorts  of  dinners  and 
conversaziones,  but  not  enough  income  to  pay  his  cab  fare.  A 
man  of  science  in  these  times  is  like  an  Esau  who  sells  his  birth- 
right for  a  mess  of  pottage.  Again,  if  one  turns  to  practice, 
it  is  still  the  old  story — wait;  and  only  after  years  of  working 
like  a  galley-slave  and  intriguing  like  a  courtier  is  there  any 
chance  of  getting  a  decent  livelihood.  I  am  not  at  all  sure 
if  ...  it  would  not  be  the  most  prudent  thing  to  stick  by  the 
Service :  there  at  any  rate  is  certainty  in  health  and  in  sickness. 

Nevertheless  he  was  mightily  encouraged  in  the  work  of 
bringing  out  his  Rattlesnake  papers  by  a  notable  success  in 
a  quarter  where  he  scarcely  dared  to  hope  for  it.  The 
Royal  Society  had  for  some  time  set  itself  to  become  a  body 
of  working  men  of  science;  to  exclude  for  the  future  all 
mere  dilettanti,  and  to  admit  a  limited  number  of  men  whose 
work  was  such  as  to  deserve  recognition.  Thanks  to  the 
initiative  of  Forbes,  he  now  found  this  recognition  accorded 
to  him  on  the  strength  of  his  "  Medusa  "  paper.  He  writes 
in  February : — 

The  F.R.S.  that  you  tell  me  you  dream  of  being  appended  to 
my  name  is  nearer  than  one  might  think,  to  my  no  small  sur- 
prise. ...  I  had  no  idea  that  it  was  at  all  within  my  reach,  until 
I  found  out  the  other  day,  talking  with  Mr.  Bell,  that  my  having 
a  paper  in  the  Transactions  was  one  of  the  best  of  qualifications. 


1851  ELECTED  F.R.S.  73 

My  friend  Forbes,  to  whom  I  am  so  much  indebted,  has 
taken  the  matter  in  hand  for  me,  and  I  am  told  I  am  sure  of 
getting  it  this  year  or  the  next.  I  do  not  at  all  expect  it  this 
year,  as  there  are  a  great  many  candidates,  far  better  men  than 
I.  ...  I  shall  think  myself  lucky  if  I  get  it  next  year.  Don't 
say  anything  about  the  matter  till  I  tell  you.  ...  As  the  old 
proverb  says,  there  is  many  a  slip  'twixt  the  cup  and  the  lip. 

There  were  thirty-eight  candidates;  of  these  the  Council 
would  select  fifteen,  and  submit  their  names  for  election  at  a 
general  meeting  of  the  Society.  He  was  not  yet  twenty-six 
years  of  age,  and  certainly  the  youngest  and  least  known 
of  the  competitors.  Others  probably  had  been  up  before — 
possibly  many  times  before;  nevertheless,  on  this,  his  first 
candidature,  he  was  placed  among  the  selected.  The  formal 
election  did  not  take  place  till  June  5,  but  on  a  chance 
visit  to  Forbes  he  heard  the  great  news.  The  F.R.S.  was  a 
formal  attestation  of  the  value  of  the  work  he  had  already 
done;  it  was  a  token  of  success  in  the  present,  an  augury 
of  greater  success  in  the  future.  No  wonder  the  news  was 
exciting. 

To-day  (he  writes  on  April  14)  I  saw  Forbes  at  the  Museum 
of  Practical  Geology,  where  I  often  drop  in  on  him.  "  Well,"  he 
said,  "  I  am  glad  to  be  able  to  tell  you  you  are  all  right  for  the 
Royal  Society;  the  selection  was  made  on  Friday  night,  and  I 
hear  that  you  are  one  of  the  selected.  I  have  not  seen  the  list, 
but  my  authority  is  so  good  that  you  may  make  yourself  easy 
about  it."  I  confess  to  having  felt  a  little  proud,  though  I 
believe  I  spoke  and  looked  as  cool  as  a  cucumber.  There  were 
thirty-eight  candidates,  out  of  whom  only  fifteen  could  be 
selected,  and  I  fear  that  they  have  left  behind  much  better  men 
than  I.  I  shall  not  feel  certain  about  the  matter  until  I  receive 
some  official  announcement.  I  almost  wish  that  until  then  I 
had  heard  nothing  about  it.  Notwithstanding  all  my  cucumbery 
appearance,  I  will  confess  to  you  that  I  could  not  sit  down  and 
read  to-day  after  the  news.  I  wandered  hither  and  thither  rest- 
lessly half  over  London.  .  .  .  Whether  I  have  it  or  not,  I  can 
say  one  thing,  that  I  have  left  my  case  to  stand  on  its  own 
strength ;  I  have  not  asked  for  a  single  vote,  and  there  are  not 
on  my  certificate  half  the  names  that  there  might  be.  If  it  be 
mine,  it  is  by  no  intrigue. 


74  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  v 

Again,  on  May  4 : — 

I  am  twenty-six  to-day  .  .  .  and  it  reminds  me  that  I  have 
left  you  now  a  whole  year.  It  is  perfectly  frightful  to  think  how 
the  time  is  slipping  by,  and  yet  seems  to  bring  us  no  nearer. 

What  have  I  done  with  my  twenty-sixth  year  ?  Six  months 
were  spent  at  sea,  and  therefore  may  be  considered  as  so  much 
lost;  and  six  months  I  have  had  in  England.  That,  I  may  say, 
has  not  been  thrown  away  altogether  without  fruit.  I  have  read 
a  good  deal  and  I  have  written  a  good  deal.  I  have  made  some 
valuable  friends,  and  have  found  my  work  more  highly  esti- 
mated than  I  had  ventured  to  hope.  I  must  tell  you  something, 
because  it  will  please  you,  even  if  you  think  me  vain  for 
doing  so. 

I  was  talking  to  Professor  Owen  yesterday,  and  said  that  I 
imagined  I  had  to  thank  him  in  great  measure  for  the  honour  of 
the  F.R.S.  "  No,"  he  said,  "  you  have  nothing  to  thank  but  the 
goodness  of  your  own  work."  For  about  ten  minutes  I  felt 
rather  proud  of  that  speech,  and  shall  keep  it  by  me  whenever 
I  feel  inclined  to  think  myself  a  fool,  and  that  I  have  a  most 
mistaken  notion  of  my  own  capacities.  The  only  use  of  honours 
is  as  an  antidote  to  such  fits  of  the  "  blue  devils."  Of  one  thing, 
however,  which  is  by  no  means  so  agreeable,  my  opportunities 
for  seeing  the  scientific  world  in  England  force  upon  me  every 
day  a  stronger  and  stronger  conviction.  It  is  that  there  is  no 
chance  of  living  by  science.  I  have  been  loth  to  believe  it,  but 
it  is  so.  There  are  not  more  than  four  or  five  offices  in  London 
which  a  Zoologist  or  Comparative  Anatomist  can  hold  and  live 
by.  Owen,  who  has  a  European  reputation,  second  only  to  that 
of  Cuvier,  gets  as  Hunterian  Professor  £300  a  year!  which  is 
less  than  the  salary  of  many  a  bank  clerk.  My  friend  Forbes, 
who  is  a  highly  distinguished  and  a  very  able  man,  gets  the 
same  from  his  office  of  Paleontologist  to  the  Geological  Survey 
of  Great  Britain.  Now,  these  are  first-rate  men — ^men  who  have 
been  at  work  for  years  laboriously  toiling  upward — ^men  whose 
abilities,  had  they  turned  them  into  the  many  channels  of  money- 
making,  must  have  made  large  fortunes.  But  the  beauty  of 
Nature  and  the  pursuit  of  Truth  allured  them  into  a  nobler  life 
— and  this  is  the  result.  ...  In  literature  a  man  may  write  for 
magazines  and  reviews,  and  so  support  himself;  but  not  so  in 
science.  I  could  get  anything  I  write  into  any  of  the  journals 
or  any  of  the  Transactions,,  but  I  know  no  means  of  thereby 
earning  five  shillings.     A  man  who  chooses  a  life  of  science 


i85i  POSITION   IN   THE  WORLD  OF  SCIENCE  75 

chooses  not  a  life  of  poverty,  but,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  a  life  of 
nothing,  and  the  art  of  living  upon  nothing  at  all  has  yet  to  be 
discovered.  You  will  naturally  think,  then,  "Why  persevere 
in  so  hopeless  a  course  ?  "  At  present  I  cannot  help  myself.  For 
my  own  credit,  for  the  sake  of  gratifying  those  who  have  hith- 
erto helped  me  on — nay,  for  the  sake  of  truth  and  science  itself, 
I  must  work  out  fairly  and  fully  complete  what  I  have  begun. 
And  when  that  is  done,  I  will  courageously  and  cheerfully  turn 
my  back  upon  all  my  old  aspirations.  The  world  is  wide,  and 
there  is  everywhere  room  for  honesty  of  purpose  and  earnest 
endeavour.  Had  I  failed  in  attaining  my  wishes  from  an  over- 
weening self-confidence, — ^had  I  found  that  the  obstacles  after 
all  lay  within  myself — I  should  have  bitterly  despised  myself, 
and,  worst  of  all,  I  should  have  felt  that  you  had  just  ground 
of  complaint. 

So  far  as  the  acknowledgment  of  the  value  of  what  I  have 
done  is  concerned,  I  have  succeeded  beyond  my  expectations, 
and  if  I  have  failed  on  the  other  side  of  the  question,  I  cannot 
blame  myself.    It  is  the  world's  fault  and  not  mine. 

A  few  months  more,  and  he  was  able  to  report  another 
and  still  more  unexpected  testimony  to  the  value  of  his 
work — ^another  encouragement  to  persevere  in  the  difficult 
pursuit  of  a  scientific  life.  He  found  himself  treated  as  an 
equal  by  men  of  established  reputation ;  and  the  first-fruits 
of  his  work  ranked  on  a  level  with  the  maturer  efforts  of 
veterans  in  science.  He  was  within  an  ace  of  receiving  the 
Royal  Medal,  which  was  awarded  him  the  following  year. 
Of  this,  he  writes : — 

November  7,  185 1. — I  have  at  last  tasted  what  it  is  to  mingle 
with  my  fellows — to  take  my  place  in  that  society  for  which 
nature  has  fitted  me,  and  whether  the  draught  has  been  a  poison 
which  has  heated  my  veins  or  true  nectar  from  the  gods,  life- 
giving,  I  know  not,  but  I  can  no  longer  rest  where  I  once  could 
have  rested.  If  I  could  find  within  myself  that  mere  personal 
ambition,  the  desire  of  fame,  present  or  posthumous,  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  this  restlessness,  I  would  root  it  out.  But  in 
those  moments  of  self-questioning,  when  one  does  not  lie  even 
to  oneself,  I  feel  that  I  can  say  it  is  not  so — that  the  real  pleas- 
ure, the  true  sphere,  lies  in  the  feeling  of  self -development — in 
the  sense  of  power  and  of  growing  oneness  with  the  great  spirit 
of  abstract  truth. 


76 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  v 


Do  you  understand  this  ?  I  know  you  do ;  our  old  oneness  of 
feeling  will  not  desert  us  here.  .  .  . 

To-day  a  most  unexpected  occurrence  came  to  my  know- 
ledge. I  must  tell  you  that  the  Queen  places  at  the  disposal  of 
the  Royal  Society  once  a  year  a  valuable  gold  medal  to  be  given 
to  the  author  of  the  best  paper  upon  either  a  physical,  chemical, 
or  anatomical  or  physiological  subject.  One  of  these  branches 
of  science  is  chosen  by  the  Royal  Society  for  each  year,  and 
therefore  for  any  given  subject — say  anatomy  and  physiology; 
it  becomes  a  triennial  prize,  and  is  given  to  the  best  memoir  in 
the  Transactions  for  three  years. 

It  happens  that  the  Royal  Medal,  as  it  is  called,  is  this  year 
given  in  Anatomy  and  Physiology.  I  had  no  idea  that  I  had  the 
least  chance  of  getting  it,  and  made  no  effort  to  do  so.  But  I 
heard  this  morning  from  a  member  of  the  Council  that  the 
award  was  made  yesterday,  and  that  I  was  within  an  ace  of 
getting  it.  Newport,  a  man  of  high  standing  in  the  scientific 
world,  and  myself  were  the  two  between  whom  the  choice  rested, 
and  eventually  it  was  given  to  him,  on  account  of  his  having  a 
greater  bulk  of  matter  in  his  papers,  so  evenly  did  the  balance 
swing.  Had  I  only  had  the  least  idea  that  I  should  be  selected 
they  should  have  had  enough  and  to  spare  from  me.  However, 
I  do  not  grudge  Newport  his  medal ;  he  is  a  good  and  a  worthy 
competitor,  old  enough  to  be  my  father,  and  has  long  had  a 
high  reputation.  Except  for  its  practical  value  as  a  means  of 
getting  a  position  I  care  little  enough  for  the  medal.  What  I 
do  care  for  is  the  justification  which  the  being  marked  in  this 
position  gives  to  the  course  I  have  taken.  Obstinate  and  self- 
willed  as  I  am  .  .  .  there  arc  times  when  grave  doubts  over- 
shadow my  mind,  and  then  such  testimony  as  this  restores  my 
self-confidence. 

To  let  you  know  the  full  force  of  what  I  have  been  saying, 
I  must  tell  you  that  this  "  Royal  Medal "  is  what  such  men  as 
Owen  and  Faraday  are  glad  to  get,  and  is  indeed  one  of  the 
highest  honours  in  England. 

To-day  I  had  the  great  pleasure  of  meeting  my  old  friend  Sir 
John  Richardson  (to  whom  I  was  mainly  indebted  for  my  ap- 
pointment in  the  Rattlesnake).  Since  I  left  England  he  has 
married  a  third  wife,  and  has  taken  a  hand  in  joining  in  search 
of  Franklin  (which  was  more  dreadful?),  like  an  old  hero  as 
he  is ;  but  not  a  feather  of  him  is  altered,  and  he  is  as  grey,  as 
really  kind,  and  as  seemingly  abrupt  and  grim,  as  ever  he  was. 
Such  a  fine  old  polar  bear  1 


CHAPTER  VI 
1851-1854 

The  course  pursued  by  the  Govemment  in  the  matter  of 
Huxley's  papers  is  curious  and  instructive.  The  Admiralty 
minute  of  1849  had  promised  either  money  assistance  for 
publishing  or  speedy  promotion  as  an  encouragement  to 
scientific  research  in  the  Navy,  especially  by  the  medical 
officers.  On  leave  to  publish  the  scientific  results  of  the 
expedition  being  asked  for,  the  Department  forestalled  any 
request  for  monetary  aid  by  an  intimation  that  none  would 
be  given.  Strong  representations,  however,  from  the  lead- 
ing scientific  authorities  induced  them  to  grant  the  appoint- 
ment to  the  Fisguard  for  six  months. 

The  sequel  shows  how  the  departmental  representatives 
of  science  did  their  best  for  science  in  Huxley's  case,  so  far 
as  in  their  power  lay : — 

June  6,  1 85 1. — The  other  day  I  received  an  intimation  that 
my  presence  was  required  at  Somerset  House.  I  rather  expected 
the  mandate,  as  six  months'  leave  was  up.  Sir  William  was 
very  civil,  and  told  me  that  the  Commander  of  the  Fisguard  had 
applied  to  the  Admiralty  to  know  what  was  to  be  done  with  me, 
as  my  leave  had  expired.  "  Now,"  said  he,  "  go  to  Forrest "  (his 
secretary),  "  write  a  letter  to  me,  stating  what  you  want,  and  I 
will  get  it  done  for  you."  So  away  I  went  and  applied  for  an 
indefinite  amount  of  leave,  on  condition  of  reporting  the 
progress  of  my  work  every  six  months,  and  as  I  suppose  I  shall 
get  it,  I  feel  quite  easy  on  that  head. 

In  May  185 1  he  applied  to  the  Royal  Society  for  help 
from  the  Govemment  Grant  towards  publishing  the  bulk 
of  his  work  as  a  whole,  for  much  of  its  value  would  be  lost 

77 


78  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vi 

if  scattered  fragmentarily  among  the  Transactions  of  vari- 
ous learned  societies.  Personally,  the  members  of  the  com- 
mittee were  very  willing  to  make  the  grant,  but  on  further 
consideration  it  appeared  that  the  money  was  to  be  applied 
for  promoting  research,  not  for  assisting  publication;  and 
moreover,  it  was  desirable  not  to  establish  a  precedent  for 
saddling  the  funds  at  the  disposal  of  the  Society  with  all 
the  publications  which  it  was  the  clear  duty  of  the  Govern- 
ment to  undertake.  On  this  ground  the  application  was 
refused,  but  at  the  same  time  it  was  resolved  that  the  Gov- 
ernment be  formally  asked  to  give  the  necessary  subvention 
towards  bringing  out  these  valuable  papers. 

A  similar  resolution  was  passed  at  the  Ipswich  meeting 
of  the  British  Association  in  July  185 1,  and  at  a  meeting  of 
its  Council  in  March  1852  the  President  declared  himself 
ready  to  carry  it  into  effect  by  asking  the  Treasury  for  the 
needful  £300.  But  at  the  July  meeting  he  could  only  re- 
port a  non  possumus  answer  for  the  current  year  (1852)  from 
the  Government,  and  a  resolution  was  passed  recommend- 
ing that  application  on  the  subject  be  renewed  by  the  British 
Association  in  the  following  year. 

Meanwhile,  weary  of  official  delay,  Huxley  had  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  writing  direct  to  the  Duke  of  Northum- 
berland, then  First  Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  whom  he  knew 
to  take  an  interest  in  scientific  research.  At  the  same  time 
he  stirred  Lord  Rosse,  the  President  of  the  Royal  Society, 
to  repeat  his  application  to  the  Treasury.  Although  the 
Admiralty  in  April  1852  again  refused  money  help,  and  bade 
him  apply  to  the  Royal  Society  for  a  portion  of  the  Govern- 
ment Grant  (which  the  latter  had  already  refused  him),  the 
Hydrographer  was  directed  to  make  inquiries  as  to  the  pro- 
priety of  granting  him  an  extension  of  leave.  To  his  ques- 
tion asking  the  exact  amount  of  time  still  required  for  finish- 
ing the  work  of  publication,  Huxley  returned  what  he 
described  as  a  "  savage  reply,"  that  his  experience  of  en- 
gravers led  him  to  think  that  the  plates  could  be  published 
in  eight  or  nine  months  from  the  receipt  of  a  grant;  that 
he  had  reason  to  believe  this  grant  might  soon  be  promised, 
but  that  the  long  delay  was  solely  due  to  the  remissness 


1852-3  TREASURY  AND  ADMIRALTY  79 

of  those  whose  duty  it  was  to  represent  his  claims  to  the 
Government ;  and  finally,  that  he  must  ask  for  a  year's  ex- 
tension of  leave. 

For  these  expressions  his  conscience  smote  him  when, 
on  June  12,  at  a  soiree  of  the  Royal  Society,  Lord  Rosse 
took  him  aside  and  informed  him  that  he  had  seen  Sir  C. 
Trevelyan,  the  Under  Secretary  to  the  Treasury,  who  said 
there  would  be  no  difficulty  in  the  matter  if  it  were  properly 
laid  before  the  Prime  Minister,  Lord  Derby.  To  Lord 
Derby  therefore  he  went,  and  was  told  that  Mr.  Huxley 
should  go  to  the  Treasury  and  arrange  matters  in  person 
with  Trevelyan.  At  the  same  time  the  indignant  tone  of 
his  letter  to  the  Hydrographer  seemed  to  have  done  good ; 
he  was  invited  to  explain  matters  in  person,  and  was  granted 
the  leave  he  asked  for. 

Everything  now  seemed  to  point  to  a  speedy  solution  of 
his  difficulties.  The  promise  of  a  grant,  of  course,  did 
nothing  immediate,  but  assured  him  a  good  position,  and 
settled  all  the  scruples  of  the  Admiralty  with  regard  to  time. 
"  You  have  no  notion,"  he  writes,  "  of  the  trouble  the  grant 
has  cost  me.  It  died  a  natural  death  till  I  wrote  to  the 
Duke  in  March,  and  brought  it  to  life  again.  The  more 
opposition  there  is,  the  more  determined  I  am  to  carry  it 
through."  But  he  was  doomed  to  a  worse  disappointment 
than  before.  Trevelyan  received  him  very  civilly,  but  had 
heard  nothing  on  the  matter  from  Lord  Derby,  and  accord- 
ingly sent  him  in  charge  of  his  private  secretary  to  see  Lord 
Derby's  secretary.  The  latter  had  seen  no  papers  relating 
to  any  such  matter,  and  supposed  Lord  Derby  had  not 
brought  them  from  St.  James'  Square,  "but  promised  to 
write  to  me  as  soon  as  anything  was  learnt.  I  look  upon  it 
as  adjourned  sine  die"  Parliament  breaking  up  immedi- 
ately after  gave  the  officials  a  good  excuse  for  doing  nothing 
more. 

When  his  year's  leave  expired  in  June  1853,  he  wrote 
the  following  letter  to  Sir  William  Burnett: — 

As  the  period  of  my  leave  of  absence  from  H.M.S.  Fisguard 
is  about  to  expire,  I  have  the  honour  to  report  that  the  duty  on 
which  I  have  been  engaged  has  been  carried  out,  as  far  as  my 


80  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vi 

means  permit,  by  the  publication  of  a  "  Memoir  upon  the  Homol- 
ogies of  the  Cephalous  Mollusca,"  with  four  plates,  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  for  1852  (published 
1853),  being  the  fourth  memoir  resulting  from  the  observations 
made  during  the  voyage  of  H.M.S.  Rattlesnake  which  has  ap- 
peared in  these  Transactions. 

I  have  the  pleasure  of  being  able  to  add  that  the  President 
and  Council  of  the  Royal  Society  have  considered  these  memoirs 
worthy  of  being  rewarded  by  the  Royal  Medal  in  Physiology 
for  1852,  which  they  did  me  the  honour  to  confer  in  the  Novem- 
ber of  that  year. 

I  regret  that  no  definite  answer  of  any  kind  having  as  yet 
been  given  to  the  strong  representations  which  were  made  by  the 
Presidents  both  of  the  Royal  Society  and  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion in  1852  to  H.M.  Government — representations  which  have 
recently  been  earnestly  repeated — in  order  to  obtain  a  g^ant  for 
the  purpose  of  publishing  the  remainder  of  these  researches  in 
a  separate  form,  I  have  been  unable  to  proceed  any  further, 
and  I  beg  to  request  a  renewal  of  my  leave  of  absence  from 
H.M.S.  Fisguard,  so  that  if  H.M.  Government  think  fit  to  give 
the  grant  applied  for,  it  may  be  in  my  power  to  make  use  of  it ; 
or  that,  should  it  be  denied,  I  may  be  enabled  to  find  some  other 
means  of  preventing  the  total  loss  of  the  labour  of  some  years. 

Hereupon  he  was  allowed  six  months  longer,  but  with 
the  intimation  that  no  further  leave  would  be  granted.  A 
final  application  from  the  scientific  authorities  resulted  in 
fresh  inquiries  as  to  the  length  of  time  still  required,  and  the 
deadlock  between  the  two  departments  of  State  being  un- 
changed, he  replied  to  the  same  effect  as  before,  but  to  no 
purpose.  His  formal  application  for  leave  in  January  1854 
was  met  by  orders  to  join  the  Illustrious  at  Portsmouth. 
He  appealed  to  the  Admiralty  that  this  appointment  might 
be  cancelled,  giving  a  brief  summary  of  the  facts,  and 
pointing  out  that  it  was  the  inaction  of  the  Treasury  which 
had  absolutely  prevented  him  from  completing  his  work. 

I  would  therefore  respectfully  submit  that,  under  these  cir- 
cumstances, my  request  to  be  permitted  to  remain  on  half-pay 
until  the  completion  of  the  publication  of  the  results  of  some 
years'  toil  is  not  wholly  unreasonable.  It  is  the  only  reward  for 
which  I  would  ask  their  Lordships,  and  indeed,  considering  the 
distinct  pledge  given  in  the  minute  to  which  I  have  referred, 


i854  SCIENTIFIC   RESULTS  OF  THE  VOYAGE  gl 

to  grant  it  would  seem  as  nearly  to  concern  their  Lordships' 
honour  as  my  advantage. 

The  counter  to  this  bold  stroke  was  crushing,  if  not 
convincing.  He  was  ordered  to  join  his  ship  immediately 
under  pain  of  being  struck  off  the  Navy  list.  He  was  of 
course  prepared  for  this  ultimatum,  and  whether  he  could 
manage  to  pursue  science  in  England  or  might  be  compelled 
to  set  up  as  a  doctor  in  Sydney,  he  considered  that  he  would 
be  better  off  than  as  an  assistant  surgeon  in  the  Navy. 
Accordingly  he  stood  firm,  and  the  threat  was  carried  into 
effect  in  March  1854.  An  unexpected  consequence  fol- 
lowed. As  long  as  he  was  in  the  navy,  with  direct  claims 
upon  a  Government  department  for  assistance  in  publishing 
his  work,  the  Royal  Society  had  not  felt  justified  in  allotting 
him  any  part  of  the  Government  Grant  But  now  that  he 
had  left  the  service,  this  objection  was  removed,  and  in  June 
1854  the  sum  of  £300  was  assigned  for  this  purpose,  while 
the  remainder  of  the  expense  was  borne  by  the  Ray  Society, 
which  undertook  th^  publication  under  the  title  of  Oceanic 
Hydrozoa.  Thus  he  was  able  to  record  with  some  satisfac- 
tion how  he  at  last  has  got  the  grant,  though  indirectly, 
from  the  Government,  and  considers  it  something  of  a  tri- 
umph for  the  principle  of  the  family  motto,  tenax  propositi. 

While  these  fruitless  negotiations  with  the  Admiralty , 
were  in  progress,  he  had  done  a  good  deal,  both  in  pub- 
lishing what  he  could  of  his  Rattlesnake  work,  and  in  trying 
to  secure  some  scientific  appointment  which  would  enable 
him  to  carry  out  his  two  chief  objects :  the  one  his  marriage, 
the  other  the  unhampered  pursuit  of  science.  In  addition 
to  the  papers  sent  home  from  the  cruise— one  on  the  Medu- 
sae, published  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  Royal 
Society  for  1849,  ^"^  one  on  the  Animal  of  Trigonia,  pub- 
lished in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Zoological  Society  for  the 
same  year — he  had  reported  to  the  Admiralty  in  June  185 1 
the  publication  of  seven  memoirs : — 

1.  On  the  Auditory  Organs  of  the  Crustacea.  Published  in 
the  Annals  of  Natural  History, 

2.  On  the  Anatomy  of  the  genus  Tethea.  Published  in  the 
Annals  of  Natural  History. 


82  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vi 

3.  Report  upon  the  Development  of  the  Echinoderms.  To 
appear  in  the  Annals  for  July. 

4.  On  the  Anatomy  and  Physiology  of  the  Salpae,  with  four 
plates.  Read  at  the  Royal  Society,  and  to  be  published  in  the 
next  part  of  the  Philosophical  Transactions, 

5.  On  two  Genera  of  Ascidians,  Doliolum  and  Appen- 
dicularia,  with  one  plate.  Read  at  the  Royal  Society,  and 
to  be  published  in  the  next  part  of  the  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions. 

6.  On  some  peculiarities  in  the  Circulation  of  the  Mollusca. 
Sent  to  M.  Milne-Edwards,  at  his  request,  to  be  published  in  the 
Annales  des  Sciences, 

7.  On  the  Generative  Organs  of  the  Physophoridae  and 
Diphydae.  Sent  to  Prof.  MuUer  of  Berlin  for  publication  in  his 
Archiv, 

By  the  end  of  the  year  he  had  four  more  to  report : — 
I.  On  the  Hydrostatic  Acalephae;  2.  On  the  genus  Sagitta, 
both  published  in  the  Report  of  the  British  Association  for 
185 1 ;  3.  On  Lacinularia  Socialis,  a  contribution  to  the 
anatomy  and  physiology  of  the  Rotifera,  in  the  Transactions 
of  the  Microscopical  Society]  4.  On  Thalassicolla,  a  new 
zoophyte,  in  the  Annals  of  Natural  History,  Next  year  he 
read  before  the  British  Association  a  paper  entitled  "  Re- 
searches into  the  Structure  of  the  Ascidians,"  and  a  very 
important  one  on  the  Morphology  of  the  Cephalous  Mol- 
*lusca,  afterwards  published  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions, 
In  addition  he  had  prepared  a  great  part  of  his  longer  work 
for  publication;  out  of  twenty-four  or  twenty-five  plates, 
nineteen  were  ready  for  the  engraver  when  he  wrote  his 
appeal  to  the  Duke  of  Northumberland.  In  this  same  year, 
1852,  he  was  also  awarded  the  Royal  Medal  in  Physiology 
for  the  value  of  his  contributions  to  the  Philosophical  Trans- 
actions. 

In  1853,  besides  seeing  some  of  these  papers  through 
the  press,  he  published  one  on  the  existence  of  Cellulose  in 
the  Tunic  of  Ascidians,  read  before  the  Microscopical  So- 
ciety, and  two  papers  on  the  Structure  of  the  Teeth;  the 
latter,  of  course,  like  a  paper  of  the  previous  year  on  Echi- 
nococcus,  being  distinct  from  the  Rattlesnake  work.  The 
greater  work  on  Oceanic  Hydrozoa,  over  which  the  battle 


i85i  SYDNEY  AND  TORONTO  83 

of  the  grant  in  aid  had  been  waged  so  long,  did  not  see 
the  light  until  1858,  when  his  interest  had  been  diverted 
from  these  subjects,  and  to  return  to  them  was  more  a 
burden  than  a  pleasure. 

In  the  second  place,  the  years  1851-53,  so  full  of  profit- 
less successes  in  pure  science,  and  delusive  hopes  held  out 
by  the  Government,  were  marked  by  an  equally  unsuccess- 
ful series  of  attempts  to  obtain  a  professorship.  If  a  chair 
of  Natural  History  had  been  established,  as  he  hoped,  in 
the  projected  university  at  Sydney,  he  would  gladly  have 
stood  for  it.  Sydney  was  a  second  home  to  him ;  he  would 
have  been  backed  by  the  great  influence  of  Macleay ;  and 
in  his  eyes  a  naturalist  could  not  desire  a  finer  field  for 
his  labours  than  the  waters  of  Port  Jackson.  But  this  was 
not  to  be,  and  the  first  chair  he  tried  for  was  the  newly- 
instituted  chair  of  Zoology  at  the  University  of  Toronto. 
The  vacancy  was  advertised  in  the  summer  of  185 1 ;  the 
pay  of  full  £300  a  year  was  enough  to  marry  on ;  his  friends 
reassured  him  as  to  his  capacity  to  fill  the  post,  which, 
moreover,  did  not  debar  him  from  the  hope  of  returning 
some  day  to  fill  a  similar  post  in  England. 

I  Edward  Street,  St.  John's  Wood  Terrace, 
July  29  [1851]. 

My  dear  Henfrey — I  have  been  detained  in  town,  or  I  hope 
we  should  long  since  have  had  our  projected  excursion. 

What  do  you  think  of  my  looking  out  for  a  Professorship  of 

Natural  History  at  Toronto?    Pay  £350,  with  chances  of  extra 

fees.     I  think  that  out  there  one  might  live  comfortably  upon 

,  that  sum — possibly  even  do  the  domestic  and  cultivate  the  Loves 

and  Graces  as  well  as  the  Muses. 

Seriously,  however,  I  should  like  to  know  what  you  think  of 
it.  The  choice  of  getting  anything  over  here  without  devoting 
one's  self  wholly  to  Mammon,  seems  to  me  very  small.  At  least 
it  involves  years  of  waiting. 

Toronto  is  not  very  much  out  of  the  way,  and  the  pay  is 
decent  and  would  enable  me  to  devote  myself  wholly  to  my 
favourite  pursuits.  Were  it  in  England,  I  could  wish  nothing 
better;  and,  as  it  is,  I  think  it  would  answer  my  purpose  very 
well  for  some  years  at  any  rate. 

If  they  go  fairly  to  work  I  think  I  shall  have  a  very  good 


84 


LIFE   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY 


chance  of  being  elected;  but  I  am  told  that  these  matters  are 
often  determined  by  petty  intrigues. 


^    I    — • — —  -  —  ".  ^  J  — ^ ^ 


'^^JC^^I^ 


^- 


Criu^^M.  c^ 


Francis*  and  I  looked  for  you  everywhere  at  the  Botanic 
Gardens,  and  finding  you  were  too  wise  to  come,  came  here, 
grieving  your  absence,  and  had  an  aesthetic  "  Bier." 

He  obtained  a  remarkably  strong  set  of  testimonials 
from  all  the  leading  anatomists  and  physiologists  in  the 
kingdom,  as  well  as  one  from  Milne-Edwards  in  Paris. 

I  have  put  together  (he  writes)  twelve  or  fourteen  testi- 
monials from  the  first  men.    I  will  have  no  other. 

His  newly-obtained  F.R.S.  was  a  recommendation  in 
itself.    So  that  he  writes : — 


*  Dr.  William  Francis,  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Philosophical  Maga- 
jtine^  and  a  member  of  the  publishing  firm  of  Taylor  and  Francis. 


i85i        DISAPPOINTMENTS  ABROAD  AND  AT  HOME  85 

There  are,  I  learn,  several  other  candidates,  but  no  one  I  fear 
at  all,  if  they  only  have  fair  play.  There  is  no  one  of  the  others 
who  can  command  anything  like  the  scientific  influence  which  is 
being  exercised  for  me,  whatever  private  influence  they  may  have. 

What  makes  all  the  big- wigs  so  marvellously  zealous  on  my 
behalf  I  know  not.  I  have  sought  none  of  them  and  flattered 
none  of  them,  that  I  can  say  with  a  good  conscience,  and  I  think 
you  know  me  well  enough  to  believe  it.  I  feel  very  grateful 
to  them;  and  if  it  ever  happens  that  I  am  able  to  help  a  young 
man  on  (when  I  am  a  big- wig  myself!)  I  shall  remember  it 

And  again,  September  23,  185 1 : — 

When  I  have  once  sent  away  my  testimonials  and  done  all 
that  is  to  be  done,  I  shall  banish  the  subject  from  my  mind  and 
make  myself  quite  easy  as  to  results.  For  the  present  I  confess 
to  being  somewhat  anxious. 

Nevertheless,  after  many  postponements,  a  near  relative 
of  an  influential  Canadian  politician  was  at  length  appointed 
late  in  1853.  By  an  amusing  coincidence,  Huxley's  newly- 
made  friend,  Tyndall,  was  likewise  a  candidate  for  a  chair 
at  Toronto,  and  likewise  rejected.  Two  letters,  concerning 
Tyndall's  election  to  the  Royal  Society,  contain  references 
both  to  Toronto  and  to  Sydney. 

4  Upper  York  Place,  St.  John's  Wood, 
Die.  4  [1851]. 

My  dear  Sir — I  was  greatly  rejoiced  to  find  I  could  be  of 
service  to  you  in  any  way,  and  I  only  regret,  for  your  sake,  that 
my  name  is  not  a  more  weighty  one.  Your  election,  I  should 
think,  can  be  a  matter  of  no  doubt. 

As  to  Toronto,  I  confess  I  am  not  very  anxious  about  it. 
Sydney  would  have  been  far  more  to  my  taste,  and  I  confess  I 
envy  you  what,  as  I  hear,  is  the  very  good  chance  you  have  of 
going  there. 

It  used  to  be  our  headquarters  in  the  Rattlesnake  and  my 
home  for  three  months  in  the  year.  Should  you  go,  I  should  be 
very  happy,  if  you  like,  to  give  you  letters  to  some  of  my 
friends. 

Greatly  as  I  wish  we  had  been  destined  to  do  our  work 
together,  I  cannot  but  offer  the  most  hearty  wishes  for  your 
success  in  Sydney. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

John  Tyndall,  Esq.  Thomas  H.  Huxley. 


86  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vi 

41  North  Bank,  Regent's  Park, 
May  7,  1852. 

My  dear  Tyndall — Allow  me  to  be  one  of  the  first  to  have 
the  pleasure  of  congratulating  you  on  your  new  honours.  I  had 
the  satisfaction  last  night  to  hear  your  name  read  out  as  one  of 
the  selected  of  the  Council  of  the  Royal  Society  for  election  to  the 
Fellowship  this  year,  and  you  are  therefore  as  good  as  elected. 

I  always  made  sure  of  your  success,  but  I  am  not  the  less 
pleased  that  it  is  now  a  fait  accompli. — I  am,  my  dear  Tyndall, 
faithfully  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

PS.— I  have  heard  nothing  of  Toronto,  and  I  begin  to  think 
that  the  whole  affair.  University  and  all,  is  a  myth. 

His  hopes  of  the  Colonies  failing,  he  tried  each  of  the 
divisions  of  the  United  Kingdom  in  turn,  with  uniform  ill- 
success;  in  1852-53  at  Aberdeen  and  at  Cork;  in  1853  at 
King's  College,  London.  He  had  great  hopes  of  Aberdeen 
at  first;  the  appointment  lay  with  the  Home  Secretary,  a 
personal  friend  of  Sir  J.  Clark,  who  was  interested  in  Hux- 
ley though  not  personally  acquainted  with  him.  But  no 
sooner  had  he  written  to  urge  the  latter's  claims  than  a 
change  of  ministry  took  place,  and  other  influences  com- 
manded the  field.  It  was  cold  comfort  that  Clark  told  him 
only  to  wait — something  must  turn  up.  There  was  still  a 
great  probability  of  the  Toronto  chair  falling  to  a  Cork 
professor;  so  with  this  hi  view,  he  gave  up  a  trip  to  Cha- 
mounix  with  his  brother,  and  attended  the  meeting  of  the 
British  Association  at  Belfast  in  August  1852,  in  order 
to  make  himself  known  to  the  Irish  men  of  science,  for,  as 
hiis  friends  told  him,  personal  influence  went  for  so  much, 
and  while  most  men's  reputations  were  better  than  them- 
selves, he  might  flatter  himself  that  he  was  better  than  his 
reputation.  But  this,  too,  came  to  nothing,  and  the  King's 
College  appointment  also  went  to  the  candidate  who  was 
backed  by  the  most  powerful  influence. 

A  fatality  seemed  to  dog  his  efforts;  nevertheless  he 
writes  at  the  end  of  1851 : — 

Among  my  scientific  friends  the  monition  I  get  on  all  sides  is 
that  of  Dante's  great  ancestor  to  him — 

A  te  sequi  la  tua  Stella. 


i85a     CONTEMILATED  ABANDONMENT  OF  SCIENCE        87 

If  this  were  from  personal  friends  only,  I  should  disregard  it; 
but  it  comes  from  men  to  whose  approbation  it  would  be  foolish 
affectation  to  deny  the  highest  value.  I  find  myself  treated  on 
a  footing  of  equality  ("my  proud  self,"  as  you  may  suppose, 
would  not  put  up  with  any  other)  by  men  whose  names  and 
works  have  been  long  before  the  world.  My  opinions  arc 
treated  with  a  respect  altogether  unaccountable  to  me,  and 
what  I  have  done  is  quoted  as  having  full  authority.  Without 
canvassing  a  soul  or  making  use  of  any  influence,  I  have  been 
elected  into  the  Royal  Society  at  a  time  when  that  election  is 
more  difficult  than  it  has  ever  been  in  the  history  of  the  Society. 
Without  my  knowledge  I  was  within  an  ace  of  getting  the  Royal 
Society  medal  this  year,  and  if  I  go  on  I  shall  very  probably 
get  it  next  time. 

In  1852  he  was  not  only  to  receive  this  coveted  honour,* 
but  also  to  be  elected  upon  the  Royal  Society  Council.  In 
January  1852,  when  standing  for  Toronto,  he  describes  how 
Col.  Sabine,  then  Secretary  of  the  Royal  Society,  dissuaded 
him  from  the  project,  saying  that  a  brilliant  prospect  lay 
before  him  if  he  would  only  wait. 

"  Make  up  your  mind  to  get  something  fairly  within  your 
reach,  and  you  will  have  us  all  with  you."  Prof.  Owen  again 
offers  to  do  anything  in  his  power  for  me;  Prof.  Forbes  will 
move  heaven  and  earth  for  mc  if  he  can;  Gray,  Bell,  and  all 
the  leading  men  are,  I  know,  similarly  inclined.  Fate  says  wait, 
and  you  shall  reach  the  goal  which  from  a  child  you  have  set 
before  yourself.  On  the  other  hand,  a  small  voice  like  con- 
science speaks  of  one  who  is  wasting  youth  and  life  away  for 
your  sake. 

Other  friends,  who,  while  recognising  his  general  capaci- 
ties, were  not  scientific,  and  had  no  direct  appreciation  of 
his  superlative  powers  in  science,  thought  he  was  following 
a  course  which  would  never  allow  him  to  marry,  and  urged 
him  to  give  up  his  unequal  battle  with  fate,  and  emigrate  to 
Australia.  Of  this  he  writes  on  August  5,  1852,  to  Miss 
Heathom : — 

I  must  make  up  my  mind  to  it  if  nothing  turns  up.  How- 
ever, I  look  upon  such  a  life  as  would  await  me  in  Australia 
with  great  misgiving.    A  life  spent  in  a  routine  employment, 

♦  See  pp.  Ill  sqq. 


88  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vi 

with  no  excitement  and  no  occupation  for  the  higher  powers  of 
the  intellect,  with  its  great  aspirations  stifled  and  all  the  great 
problems  of  existence  set  hopelessly  in  the  background,  offers  to 
me  a  prospect  that  would  be  utterly  intolerable  but  for  your 
love.  .  .  .  Sometimes  I  am  half  mad  with  the  notion  of  bring- 
ing all  my  powers  in  a  surer  struggle  for  a  livelihood.  Some- 
times I  am  equally  wild  at  thinking  of  the  long  weary  while  that 
has  passed  since  we  met  There  are  times  when  I  cannot  bear 
to  think  of  leaving  my  present  pursuits,  when  I  feel  I  should  be 
g^lty  of  a  piece  of  cowardly  desertion  from  my  duty  in  doing 
it,  and  there  come  intervals  when  I  would  give  truth  and  sci- 
ence and  all  hopes  to  be  folded  in  your  arms.  ...  I  know  which 
course  is  right,  but  I  never  know  which  I  may  follow;  help 
me  .  .  .  for  there  is  only  one  course  in  which  there  is  either 
hope  or  peace  for  me. 

These  repeated  disappointments  deepened  the  fits  of  de- 
pression which  constantly  assailed  him.  He  was  torn  by 
two  opposing  thoughts.  Was  it  just,  was  it  right,  to  demand 
so  great  a  sacrifice  from  the  woman  who  had  entrusted  her 
future  to  the  uncertain  chances  of  his  fortunes?  Could  he 
ask  her  to  go  on  offering  up  the  best  years  of  her  life  to 
aspirations  of  his  which  were  possibly  chimerical,  or  per- 
haps merely  selfishness  in  disguise,  which  ought  to  yield  to 
more  imperative  duties?  Why  not  clip  the  wings  of  Peg- 
asus, and  descend  to  the  sober,  everyday  jog-trot  after 
plain  bread  and  cheese  like  other  plain  people  ?  Time  after 
time  he  almost  made  up  his  mind  to  throw  science  to  the 
winds;  to  emigrate  and  establish  a  practice  in  Sydney;  to 
try  even  squatting  or  storekeeping.  And  yet  he  knew  only 
too  well  that  with  his  temperament  no  life  would  bring  him 
the  remotest  approach  to  lasting  happiness  and  satisfaction 
except  one  that  gave  scope  to  his  intellectual  passion.  To 
yield  to  the  immediate  pressure  of  circumstances  was  per- 
haps ignoble,  was  even  more  probably  a  surer  road  to  the 
loss  of  happiness  for  himself  and  for  his  wife  than  the 
repeated  and  painful  sacrifices  of  the  present.  With  all 
this,  however,  and  the  more  when  assured  of  her  entire 
confidence  in  his  judgment,  he  could  not  but  feel  a  sense 
of  remorse  that  she  willingly  accepted  the  sacrifice,  and 
feared  that  she  might  have  done  so  rather  to  gratify  his 


185a  DESPAIR  89 

wishes  than  because  reason  approved  it  as  the  right  course 
to  follow. 

Here  is  another  typical  extract  from  his  correspondence. 
Hearing  that  Toronto  is  likely  to  go  to  a  relative  of  a  Cana- 
dian minister,  he  writes,  January  2,  1852 : — 

I  think  of  all  my  dreams  and  aspirations,  and  of  the  path 
which  I  know  lies  before  me  if  I  can  only  bide  my  time,  and  it 
seems  a  sin  and  a  shameful  thing  to  allow  my  resolve  to  be 
turned;  and  then  comes  the  mocking  suspicion,  is  this  fine  ab- 
stract duty  of  yours  anything  but  a  subtlety  of  your  own  selfish- 
ness ?    Have  you  not  other  more  imperative  duties  ? 

You  may  fancy  whether  my  life  is  a  very  happy  one  thus 
spent  without  even  the  satisfaction  of  the  sense  of  right-doing. 
I  must  come  to  some  resolution  about  it,  and  that  shortly.  I 
was  talking  seriously  with  Fanning  the  other  night  about  the 
possibility  of  finding  some  employment  of  a  profitable  kind  in 
Australia,  storekeeping,  squatting,  or  the  like.  As  I  told  him, 
any  change  in  my  mode  of  life  must  be  total.  If  I  am  to  change 
at  all,  the  change  must  be  total  and  complete.  I  will  not  attempt 
my  own  profession.  I  should  only  be  led  astray  to  think  and  to 
work  as  of  old,  and  sigh  continually  for  my  old  dear  and  intoxi- 
cating pursuits.  I  wish  I  understood  Brewing,  and  I  would 
make  a  proposition  to  come  and  help  your  father.  You  may 
smile,  but  I  am  as  serious  as  ever  I  was  in  my  life. 

The  distance  between  them  made  it  doubly  difficult  to 
keep  in  touch  with  one  another,  when  the  post  took  from 
four  and  a  half  to  five  or  even  six  months  to  reach  England 
from  Australia.  The  answer  to  a  letter  would  come  when 
the  matter  in  question  was  long  done  with.  The  assur- 
ance that  he  was  doing  right  at  one  moment  seemed  in- 
adequate when  circumstances  had  altered  and  hope  sunk 
lower.  It  was  all  too  easy  to  suspect  that  she  did  not  under- 
stand his  aims,  his  thirst  for  action,  nor  the  fact  that  he  was 
no  longer  free  to  do  as  he  liked,  whether  to  stay  in  the 
navy,  to  go  into  practice,  or  follow  his  own  pursuits  and 
pleasure.  Yet  it  made  him  despair  to  be  so  hedged  in  by 
circumstances.  With  all  his  efforts,  he  seemed  as  though 
he  had  done  nothing  but  earn  the  reputation  of  being  a 
very  promising  young  man.  How  much  easier  to  continue 
the  struggle  if  he  could  but  have  seen  her  face  to  face,  and 


90 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vi 


read  her  thoughts  as  to  whether  he  were  right  or  wrong  in 
the  course  he  was  pursuing.  He  appeals  to  her  faith  that 
he  is  choosing  the  nobler  path  in  pursuing  knowledge,  than 
in  turning  aside  to  the  temptation  of  throwing  it  up  for  the 
sake  of  their  speedier  union.  Still  she  was  right  in  claim- 
ing a  share  in  his  work;  but  for  her  his  life  would  have 
been  wasted. 

The  clouds  gathered  very  thickly  about  him  when  in 
April  1852  his  mother  died,  while  his  father  was  hopelessly 
ill.  "  Belief  and  happiness,"  he  writes,  "  seem  to  be  beyond 
the  reach  of  thinking  men  in  these  days,  but  courage  and 
silence  are  left"  Again  the  clouds  lifted,  for  in  October  he 
received  Miss  Heathom's  "  noble  and  self-sacrificing  letter, 
which  has  given  me  more  comfort  than  an>thing  for  a  long 
while,"  the  keynote  of  which  was  that  a  man  should  pursue 
those  things  for  which  he  is  most  fitted,  let  them  be  what 
they  will.  He  now  felt  free  to  tell  the  vicissitudes  of 
thought  and  will  he  had  passed  through  this  twelvemonth, 
and  how  the  idea  of  giving  up  all  had  affected  him. 
"  The  spectre  of  a  wasted  life  has  passed  before  me — a 
vision  of  that  servant  who  hid  his  talent  in  a  napkin  and 
buried  it." 

Early  in  1853  he  writes  how  much  he  was  cheered  by  his 
sister's  advice  and  encouragement  to  persist  in  the  struggle ; 
but  the  darkest  moment  was  still  to  come.  His  hopes  from 
his  candidature  crumbled  away  one  after  the  other ;  his  leave 
from  the  Admiralty  was  coming  to  an  end,  and  there  was 
small  hope  of  renewing  it ;  the  grant  from  Government  re- 
mained as  unattainable  as  ever ;  the  long  struggle  had  taught 
him  the  full  extent  of  his  powers  only,  it  seemed,  to  end  by 
denying  him  all  opportunity  for  their  use. 

And  so  the  card  house  I  have  been  so  laboriously  building  up 
these  two  years  with  all  manner  of  hard  struggling  will  be 
tumbled  down  again,  and  my  small  light  will  be  ignominiously 
snuffed  out  like  that  of  better  men.  ...  I  can  submit  if  the  fates 
are  too  strong.  The  world  is  no  better  than  an  arena  of  gladi- 
ators, and  I,  a  stray  savage,  have  been  turned  into  it  to  fight  my 
way  with  my  rude  club  among  the  steel-clad  fighters.  Well,  I 
have  won  my  way  into  the  front  rank,  and  ought  to  be  thankful 


1853  HIS  DECISION  9I 

and  deem  it  only  the  natural  order  of  things  if  I  can  get  no 
further. 

And  again  in  a  letter  of  July  6,  1853 : — 

I  know  that  these  three  years  have  inconceivably  altered 
me — that  from  being  an  idle  man,  only  too  happy  to  flow  into 
the  humours  of  the  moment,  I  have  become  almost  unable  to 
exist  without  active  intellectual  excitement.  I  know  that  in 
this  I  find  peace  and  rest  such  as  I  can  attain  in  no  other  way. 
From  being  a  mere  untried  fledgling,  doubtful  whether  the  wish 
to  fly  proceeded  from  mere  presumption  or  from  budding  wings, 
I  have  now  some  confidence  in  well-tried  pinions,  which  have 
given  me  rank  among  the  strongest  and  foremost.  I  have 
always  felt  how  difficult  it  was  for  you  to  realise  all  this — ^how 
strange  it  must  be  to  you  that  though  your  image  remained  as 
bright  as  ever,  new  interests  and  purposes  had  ranged  themselves 
around  it,  and  though  they  could  claim  no  pre-eminence,  yet 
demanded  their  share  of  my  thoughts.  I  make  no  apology  for 
this — it  is  man's  nature  and  the  necessary  influence  of  circum- 
stances which  will  so  have  it;  and  depend,  however  painful  our 
present  separation  may  be,  the  spectacle  of  a  man  who  had 
given  up  the  cherished  purpose  of  his  life,  the  Esau  who  had 
sold  his  birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage  and  with  it  his  self- 
respect,  would  before  long  years  were  over  our  heads  be  infi- 
nitely more  painful.  Depend  upon  it,  the  trust  which  you 
placed  in  my  hands  when  I  left  you — ^to  choose  for  both  of  us — 
has  not  been  abused.  Hemmed  in  by  all  sorts  of  difficulties,  my 
choice  was  a  narrow  one,  and  I  was  guided  more*  by  circum- 
stances than  my  own  free  will.  Nevertheless  the  path  has  shown 
itself  to  be  a  fair  one,  neither  more  difficult  nor  less  so  than 
most  paths  in  life  in  which  a  man  of  energy  may  hope  to  do 
much  if  he  believes  in  himself,  and  is  at  peace  within. 

My  course  in  life  is  taken.  I  will  not  leave  London — I  will 
make  myself  a  name  and  a  position  as  well  as  an 'income  by  some 
kind  of  pursuit  connected  with  science,  which  is  the  thing  for 
which  nature  has  fitted  me  if  she  has  ever  fitted  any  one  for  any- 
thing. Bethink  yourself  whether  you  can  cast  aside  all  repining 
and  all  doubt,  and  devote  yourself  in  patience  and  trust  to  help- 
ing me  along  my  path  as  no  one  else  could.  I  know  what  I  ask, 
and  the  sacrifice  I  demand,  and  if  this  were  the  time  to  use  false 
modesty,  I  should  say  how  little  I  have  to  offer  in  return.  .  .  . 

I  am  full  of  faults,  but  I  am  real  and  true,  and  the  whole 
devotion  of  an  earnest  soul  cannot  be  overprized. 


92 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vi 


...  It  is  as  if  all  that  old  life  at  Holmwood  had  merely  been 
a  preparation  for  the  real  life  of  our  love — as  if  we  were  then 
children  ignorant  of  life's  real  purpose — as  if  these  last  months 
had  merely  been  my  old  doubts  over  again,  whether  I  had  rightly 
or  wrongly  interpreted  the  manner  and  the  words  that  had  given 
me  hope.  .  .  . 

We  will  begin  the  new  love  of  woman  and  man,  no  longer 
that  of  boy  and  girl,  conscious  that  we  have  aims  and  pur- 
poses as  well  as  affections,  and  that  if  love  is  sweet  life  is  dread- 
fully stern  and  earnest. 

As  time  went  on  and  no  permanency  offered — ^although 
a  good  deal  of  writing  fell  in  his  way — the  strain  told 
heavily  upon  him.  In  the  autumn  he  was  quite  out  of  sorts, 
body  and  mind,  more  at  war  with  himself  than  he  ever 
was  in  his  life  before.  All  this,  he  writes,  had  darkened  his 
thoughts,  had  made  him  once  more  imagine  a  hopeless  dis- 
crepancy between  the  two  of  them  in  their  ways  of  thinking 
and  objects  in  life.  It  was  not  till  November  1853  that  this 
depression  was  banished  by  the  trust  and  confidence  of  her 
last  letter.  "  I  wish  to  Heaven,"  he  writes,  "  it  had  reached 
me  six  months  ago.  It  would  have  saved  me  a  world  of 
pain  and  error."  But  with  this,  the  worst  period  of  mental 
suffering  was  over,  and  every  haunting  doubt  was  finally 
exorcised.  His  career  was  made  possible  by  the  steady 
faith  which  neither  separation  nor  any  misgiving  nor  its  own 
troubles  could  shake.  And  from  this  point  all  things  began 
to  brighten.  His  health  had  been  restored  by  a  trip  to  the 
Pyrenees  with  his  brother  George  in  September.  He  had 
got  work  that  enabled  him  to  regard  the  Admiralty  and  its 
menaces  with  complete  equanimity ;  a  Manual  of  Compara- 
tive Anatomy,  for  Churchill  the  publisher,  regular  work  on 
the  Westminster*  and  another  book  in  prospect,  "  so  that 
if  I  quit  the  Service  to-morrow,  these  will  give  me  more  than 

*  This  regular  work  was  the  article  on  Contemporary  Science,  which 
in  October  1854  he  got  Tyndall  to  share  with  him.  For,  he  writes, 
**  To  give  some  account  of  the  books  in  one's  own  department  is  no 
particular  trouble,  and  comes  with  me  under  the  head  of  being  paid 
for  what  I  must,  in  any  case,  do— but  I  neither  will,  nor  can,  go  on 
writing  about  books  in  other  departments,  of  which  I  am  not  com- 
petent to  form  a  judgment  even  if  I  had  the  time  to  give  to  them.** 


i853  HAPPIER  PROSPECTS  93 

my  pay  has  been."  And  on  December  7  he  writes  how  he 
has  been  restored  and  revived  by  reading  over  her  last  two 
letters,  and  confesses,  "  I  have  been  unjust  to  the  depth 
and  strength  of  your  devotion,  but  will  never  do  so  again." 
Then  he  tells  all  he  had  gone  through  before  leaving  Eng- 
land in  September  for  his  holiday — how  he  had  resolved 
to  abandon  all  his  special  pursuits  and  take  up  Chemistry, 
for  practical  purposes,  when  first  one  publisher  and  then 
another  asked  him  to  write  for  them,  and  hopes  were  held 
out  to  him  of  being  appointed  to  deliver  the  Fullerian  lec- 
tures at  the  Royal  Institution  for  the  next  three  years ;  while, 
most  important  of  all,  Edward  Forbes  was  likely  before  long, 
to  leave  his  post  at  the  Museum  of  Practical  Geology,  and 
he  had  already  been  spoken  to  by  the  authorities  about  fill- 
ing it.  This  was  worth  some  £200  a  year,  while  he  calcu- 
lated to  make  about  £250  by  his  pen  alone.  "  Therefore  it 
would  be  absurd  to  go  hunting  for  chemical  birds  in  the 
bush  when  I  have  such  in  the  hand." 


CHAPTER  VII 
1851-1853 

Several  letters  dating  from  1851  to  1853  help  to  fill  up 
the  outlines  of  Huxley's  life  during  those  three  years  of 
struggle.  There  is  a  description  of  the  British  Association 
meeting  at  Ipswich  in  185 1,*  with  the  traditional  touch  of 
gaiety  to  enliven  the  gravity  of  its  proceedings,  and  the  un- 
conventional jollity  of  the  Red  Lion  Club  (a  dining-club  of 
members  of  the  Association),  whose  palmy  days  were  those 
under  the  inspiration  of  the  genial  and  gifted  Forbes.  This 
was  the  meeting  at  which  Huxley  first  began  his  alliance 
with  Tyndall,  with  whom  he  travelled  down  from  town, 
although  he  does  not  mention  his  name  in  this  letter.  With 
Hooker  he  had  already  made  acquaintance ;  and  from  this 
time  forwards  the  three  were  closely  bound  together  by 
personal  regard  as  well  as  by  similarity  of  aims  and  interests. 

Then  follow  his  sketch  of  the  English  scientific  world  as 
he  found  it  in  185 1,  given  in  his  letter  to  W.  Macleay; 
several  letters  to  his  sister;  the  description  of  his  first  lec- 
ture at  the  Royal  Institution,  which,  though  successful  on 
the  whole,  was  very  different  in  manner  and  delivery  from 
the  clear  and  even  flow  of  his  later  style,  with  the  voice  not 
loud  but  distinct,  the  utterance  never  hurried  beyond  the 
point  of  immediate  comprehension,  but  carrying  the  atten- 
tion of  the  audience  with  it,  eager  to  the  end.  Two  letters 
of  warning  and  remonstrance  against  the  habits  of  lecturing 

*  **  Forbes  advises  me  to  go  down  to  the  meeting  of  the  British  As- 
sociation this  year  and  make  myself  notorious  somehow  or  other. 
Thank  Heaven  I  have  impudence  enough  to  lecture  the  savans  of  Eu- 
rope if  necessary.   Can  you  imagine  me  holding  forth  ?"  (June  6, 1851.) 
94 


i85i  BRITISH  ASSOCIATION  AT  IPSWICH  95 

in  a  colloquial  tone,  suitable  to  a  knot  of  students  gathered 
round  his  table,  but  not  to  a  large  audience— of  running 
his  words,  especially  technical  terms,  together — of  pouring 
out  new  and  unfamiliar  matter  at  breakneck  speed,  were 
addressed  to  him-— one  by  a  "  working  man  "  of  his  Monday 
evening  audience  at  Jermyn  Street  in  1855,  the  other,  un- 
dated, by  Mr.  Jodrell,  a  frequenter  of  the  Royal  Institution, 
and  afterwards  founder  of  the  Jodrell  Lectureships  at  Uni- 
versity College,  London,  and  other  benefactions  to  science, 
and  these  he  kept  by  him  as  a  perpetual  reminder,  labelled 
"  Good  Advice."  How  much  can  be  done  by  the  frank 
acceptance  of  criticism  and  by  careful  practice  is  shown 
by  the  difference  between  the  feelings  of  the  later  audiences 
who  flocked  to  his  lectures,  and  those  of  the  members  of 
an  Institute  in  St.  John's  Wood,  who,  as  he  often  used 
to  tell,  after  hearing  him  in  his  early  days,  petitioned  "  not 
to  have  that  young  man  again." 

July  12,  185 1. — The  interval  between  my  letters  has  been  a 
little  longer  than  usual,  as  I  have  been  very  busy  attending  the 
meeting  of  the  British  Association  at  Ipswich.  The  last  time  I 
attended  one  was  at  Southampton  five  years  ago,  when  I  went 
merely  as  a  spectator,  and  looked  at  the  people  who  read  papers 
as  if  they  were  somebodies.*  This  time  I  have  been  behind  the 
scenes  myself  and  have  played  out  my  little  part  on  the  boards. 
I  know  all  about  the  scenery  and  decorations,  and  no  longer 
think  the  manager  a  wizard. 

Any  one  who  conceives  that  I  went  down  from  any  especial 
interest  in  the  progress  of  science  makes  a  great  mistake.  My 
journey  was  altogether  a  matter  of  policy,  partly  for  the  purpose 
of  doing  a  little  necessary  trumpeting,  and  partly  to  get  the 
assistance  of  the  Association  in  influencing  the  Government. 

On  the  journey  down,  my  opposite  in  the  railway  carriage 
turned  out  to  be  Sir  James  Ross,  the  Antarctic  discoverer.  We 
had  some  very  pleasant  talk  together.  I  knew  all  about  him,  as 
Dayman t  had  sailed  under  his  command;  oddly  enough  we 
afterwards  went  to  lodge  at  the  same  house,  but  as  we  were 
attending  our  respective  sections  all  day  we  did  not  see  much 
of  one  another. 

*  See  Chap.  II.,  ad  fin, 

f  One  of  the  lieutenants  of  the  Rattlesnake, 


96  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vii 

When  we  arrived  at  Ipswich  there  was  a  good  deal  of  trouble 
about  getting  lodgings.  My  companions  located  themselves 
about  a  mile  out  of  the  town,  but  that  was  too  far  for  my  "  in- 
dolent habits  "  ;  I  sought  and  at  last  found  a  room  in  the  town 
a  little  bigger  than  my  cabin  on  board  ship  for  which  I  had  the 
satisfaction  of  paying  30s.  a  week. 

You  know  what  the  British  Association  is.  It  is  a  meeting 
of  the  savans  of  England  and  the  Continent,  under  the  presi- 
dency of  some  big-wig  or  other, — this  year  of  the  Astronomer- 
Royal, — for  the  purpose  of  exchanging  information.  To  this 
end  they  arrange  themselves  into  different  sections,  each  with 
its  own  president  and  committee,  and  indicated  by  letters.  For 
instance,  Section  A  is  for  Mathematics  and  Physics;  Section 
B  for  Chemistry,  etc. ;  my  own  section,  that  of  Natural  History, 
was  D,  under  the  presidency  of  Professor  Henslow  of  Cam- 
bridge. I  was  on  the  committee,  and  therefore  saw  the  working 
of  the  whole  affair. 

On  the  first  day  there  was  a  dearth  of  matter  in  our  section. 
People  had  not  arrived  with  their  papers.  So  by  way  of  finding 
out  whether  I  could  speak  in  public  or  not,  I  got  up  and  talked  to 
them  for  about  twenty  minutes.  I  was  considerably  surprised 
to  find  that  when  once  I  had  made  the  plunge,  my  tongue  went 
glibly  enough. 

On  the  following  day  I  read  a  long  paper,  which  I  had  pre- 
pared and  illustrated  with  a  lot  of  big  diagrams,  to  an  audience 
of  about  twenty  people !  The  rest  were  all  away  after  Prince  Al- 
bert, who  had  been  unfortunately  induced  to  visit  the  meeting, 
and  fairly  turned  the  heads  of  the  good  people  of  Ipswich.  On 
Saturday  a  very  pleasant  excursion  on  scientific  pretences,  but  in 
fact  a  most  jolly  and  unscientific  picnic,  took  place.  Several  hun- 
dred people  went  down  the  Orwell  in  a  steamer.  The  majority 
returned,  but  I  and  two  others,  considering  Sunday  in  Ipswich 
an  impossibility,  stopped  at  a  little  seaside  village,  Felixstowe, 
and  idled  away  our  time  there  very  pleasantly.  Babington  the 
botanist  and  myself  walked  in  to  Ipswich  on  Sunday  night.  It 
is  about  eleven  miles,  and  we  did  it  comfortably  in  two  hours 
and  three  quarters,  which  was  not  bad  walking. 

On  Monday  at  Section  D  again.  Forbes  brought  forward 
the  subject  of  my  application  to  Government  in  committee,  and 
it  was  unanimously  agreed  to  forward  a  resolution  on  the  sub- 
ject to  the  Committee  of  Recommendations.  I  made  a  speechi- 
fication  of  some  length  in  the  Section  about  a  new  animal. 

On  Thursday  morning  I  attended  a  meeting  of  the  Ray 


i85i  BRITISH   ASSOCIATION   AT   IPSWICH  97 

Society,  and  to  my  infinite  astonishment,  the  secretary,  Dr. 
Lankester,  gave  mc  the  second  motion  to  make.  The  Prince 
of  Casino  moved  the  first,  so  I  was  in  good  company.  The  great 
absurdity  of  it  was  that  not  being  a  member  of  the  Society  I 
had  properly  no  right  to  speak  at  all.  However,  it  was  only  a 
vote  of  thanks,  and  I  got  up  and  did  the  "  neat  and  appropriate  " 
in  style. 

After  this  a  party  of  us  went  out  dredging  in  the  Orwell  in 
a  small  boat.  We  were  away  all  day,  and  it  rained  hard  coming 
back,  so  that  I  got  wet  through,  and  had  to  pull  five  miles  to 
keep  off  my  enemy,  the  rheumatics. 

Then  came  the  President's  dinner,  to  which  I  did  not  go,  as 
I  preferred  making  myself  comfortable  with  a  few  friends  else- 
where. And  after  that,  the  final  evening  meeting,  when  all  the 
final  determinations  are  announced. 

Among  them  I  had  the  satisfaction  to  hear  that  it  was 
resolved  —  that  the  President  and  Council  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation should  co-operate  with  the  Royal  Society  in  repre- 
senting the  value  and  importance,  etc.,  of  Mr.  T.  H.  Huxley's 
zoological  researches  to  Her  Majesty's  Government  for  the  pur- 
pose of  obtaining  a  grant  towards  their  publication.  Subse- 
quently I  was  introduced  to  Colonel  Sabine,  the  President  of 
the  Association  in  1852,  and  a  man  of  very  high  standing  and 
considerable  influence.  He  had  previously  been  civil  enough 
to  sign  my  certificate  at  the  Royal  Society,  unsolicited,  and 
therefore  knew  me  by  reputation — I  only  mean  that  as  a  very 
small  word.  He  was  very  civil  and  promised  me  every  assist- 
ance in  his  power. 

It  is  a  curious  thing  that  out  of  the  four  applications  to 
Government  to  be  made  by  the  Association,  two  were  for  Naval 
Assistant-Surgeons,  viz.  one  for  Dr.  Hooker,  who  had  just  re- 
turned from  the  Himalaya  Mountains,  and  one  for  me.  How  I 
envied  Hooker ;  he  has  long  been  engaged  to  a  daughter  of  Pro- 
fessor Henslow's,  and  at  this  very  meeting  he  sat  by  her  side. 
He  is  going  to  be  married  in  a  day  or  two.  His  father  is  director 
of  the  Kew  Gardens,  and  there  is  little  doubt  of  his  succeed- 
ing him. 

Whether  the  Government  accede  to  the  demand  that  will 
be  made  upon  them  or  not,  I  can  now  rest  satisfied  that  no 
means  of  influencing  them  has  been  left  unused  by  me.  If 
they  will  not  listen  to  the  conjoint  recommendations  of  the 
Royal  Society  and  the  British  Association,  they  will  listen  to 
nothing.  .  .  . 


98 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vii 


July  i6,  185 1. — I  went  yesterday  to  dine  with  Colonel  Sa- 
bine. We  had  a  long  discourse  about  the  prospects  and  probable 
means  of  existence  of  young  men  trying  to  make  their  way  to 
an  existence  in  the  scientific  world.  I  took,  as  indeed  what  I 
have  seen  has  forced  me  to  take,  rather  the  despairing  side  of 
the  question,  and  said  that  as  it  seemed  to  me  England  did  not 
afford  even  the  means  of  existence  to  young  men  who  were 
willing  to  devote  themselves  to  science.  However,  he  spoke 
cheeringly,  and  advised  me  by  no  means  to  be  hasty,  but  to  wait, 
and  he  doubted  not  that  I  should  succeed.  He  cited  his  own 
case  as  an  instance  of  waiting,  eventually  successful.  Alto- 
gether I  felt  the  better  for  what  he  said.  .  .  . 

There  has  been  a  notice  of  me  in  the  Literary  Gazette  for 
last  week,  much  more  laudatory  than  I  deserve,  from  the  pen  of 
my  friend  Forbes.*  .  .  . 

In  the  same  number  is  a  rich  song  from  the  same  fertile  and 
versatile  pen,  which  was  sung  at  one  of  our  Red  Lion  meetings. 
That  is  why  I  want  you  to  look  at  it,  not  that  you  will  under- 
stand it,  because  it  is  full  of  allusions  to  occurrences  known  only 
in  the  scientific  circles.  At  Ipswich  we  had  a  grand  Red  Lion 
meeting;  about  forty  members  were  present,  and  among  them 
some  of  the  most  distinguished  members  of  the  Association. 
Some  foreigners  were  invited  (the  Prince  of  Casino,  Buona- 
parte's nephew,  among  others),  and  were  not  a  little  astonished 
to  see  the  grave  professors,  whose  English  solemnity  and  gravity 
they  had  doubtless  commented  on  elsewhere,  giving  themselves 
up  to  all  sorts  of  fun.  Among  the  Red  Lions  we  have  a  custom 
(instead  of  cheering)  of  waving  and  wagging  one  coat-tail 
(one  Lion's  tail)  when  we  applaud.  This  seemed  to  strike  the 
Prince's  fancy  amazingly,  and  when  he  got  up  to  return  thanks 
for  his  health  being  drunk,  he  told  us  that  as  he  was  rather 
out  of  practice  in  speaking  English,  he  would  return  thanks 
in  our  fashion,  and  therewith  he  gave  three  mighty  roars  and 
wags,  to  the  no  small  amusement  of  every  one.  He  is  singularly 
like  the  portraits  of  his  uncle,  and  seems  a  very  jolly,  good- 
humoured  old  fellow.  I  believe,  however,  he  is  a  bit  of  a  rip. 
It  was  remarkable  how  proud  the  Quakers  were  of  being  noticed 
by  him. 

*  An  appreciation  of  his  papers  on  the  Physophoridae  and  Sagitta, 
speaking  highly  both  of  his  observations  and  philosophic  power,  in 
the  report  of  the  proceedings  in  Section  D. 


i85i  SCIEl^CE   HIS  VOCATION  ^q 


To  W.  Macleay,  of  Sydney 

41  North  Bank,  Regent's  Park,  N<nf,  9,  185 1. 
My  dear  Sir — It  is  a  year  to-day  since  the  old  Rattlesnake 
was  paid  off,  and  that  reminds  me  among  other  things  that  I 
have  hardly  kept  my  promise  of  giving  you  information  now 
and  then  upon  the  state  of  matters  scientific  in  England.  My 
last  letter  is,  I  am  afraid,  nine  or  ten  months  old,  but  here  in 
England  the  fighting  and  scratching  to  keep  your  place  in  the 
crowd  exclude  almost  all  other  thoughts.  When  I  last  wrote  I 
was  but  at  the  edge  of  the  crush  at  the  pit-door  of  this  great 
fools'  theatre — now  I  have  worked  my  way  into  it  and  through 
it,  and  am,  I  hope,  not  far  from  the  check-takers.  I  have  learnt 
a  good  deal  in  my  passage. 

[Follows  an  account  of  his  efforts  to  get  his  papers 
published — substantially  a  repetition  of  what  has  already 
been  given.] 

Rumours  there  are  scattered  abroad  of  a  favourable  cast, 
and  I  am  told  on  all  hands  that  something  will  certainly  be  done. 
I  only  asked  for  £300,  something  less  than  the  cost  of  a  parlia- 
mentary blue-book  which  nobody  ever  hears  of.  They  take  care 
to  obliterate  any  spark  of  gratitude  that  might  perchance  arise 
for  What  they  do,  by  keeping  one  so  long  in  suspense  that  the 
result  becomes  almost  a  matter  of  indifference.  Had  I  known 
they  would  keep  me  so  long,  I  would  have  published  my  work 
as  a  series  of  papers  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions, 

In  the  meanwhile  I  have  not  been  idle,  as  I  hope  to  show  you 
by  the  various  papers  enclosed  with  this.  You  will  recollect  that 
on  the  Salpae.  No  one  here  knew  anything  about  them,  and  I 
thought  that  all  my  results  were  absolutely  new  —  until,  me 
miserum!  I  found  them  in  a  little  paper  of  Krohn's  in  the 
Annates  des  Sciences  for  1846,  without  any  figures  to  draw 
anybody's  attention. 

The  memoir  on  the  Medusae  (which  I  sent  to  you)  has,  I 
hear,  just  escaped  a  high  honour — to  wit,  the  Royal  Medal.  The 
award  has  been  made  to  Newport  for  his  paper  on  "  Impregna- 
tion." I  had  no  idea  that  anything  I  had  done  was  likely  to 
have  the  slightest  claim  to  such  distinction,  but  I  was  informed 
yesterday  by  one  of  the  Council  that  the  balance  hung  pretty 
evenly,  and  was  only  decided  by  their  thinking  my  memoir  was 
too  small  and  short. 


lOO  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR  rflUXLEY  chap,  vii 

I  have  been  working  in  all  things  with  a  reference  to  wide 
views  of  zoological  philosophy,  and  the  report  upon  the  Echino- 
derms  is  intended  in  common  with  the  mem.  on  the  Salpae  to 
explain  my  views  of  Individuality  among  the  lower  animals — 
views  which  I  mean  to  illustrate  still  further  and  enunciate  still 
more  clearly  in  my  book  that  is  to  be.*  They  have  met  with 
approval  from  Carpenter,  as  you  will  see  by  the  last  edition  of 
his  Principles  of  Physiology,  and  I  think  that  Forbes  and  some 
others  will  be  very  likely  eventually  to  come  round  to  them,  but 
everything  that  relates  to  abstract  thought  is  at  a  low  ebb  among 
the  mass  of  naturalists  in  this  country. 

In  the  paper  upon  "  Thalassicolla,"  and  in  that  which  I  read 
before  the  British  Association,  as  also  in  one  upon  the  organisa- 
tion of  the  Rotifera,  which  I  am  going  to  have  published  in  the 
Microscopical  Society's  Transactions ,  I  have  been  driving  in 
a  series  of  wedges  into  Cuvier's  Radiata,  and  showing  how  selon 
mot  they  ought  to  be  distributed. 

I  am  every  day  becoming  more  and  more  certain  that  you 
were  on  the  right  track  thirty  years  ago  in  your  views  of  the 
order  and  s)rmmetry  to  be  traced  in  the  true  natural  system. 

During  the  next  session  I  mean  to  send  in  a  paper  to  the 
R.S.  upon  the  "  Homologies  of  the  Mollusca,"  which  shall 
astonish  them.  I  want  to  get  done  for  the  Mollusca  what 
Savigny  did  for  the  Articulata,  viz.  to  show  how  they  all — 
Cephalopoda,  Gasteropoda,  Pteropoda,  Heteropoda,  etc.  —  are 
organised  on  one  type,  and  how  the  homologous  organs  are 
modified  in  each.  What  with  this  and  the  book,  I  shall  have 
enough  to  do  for  the  next  six  months. 

You  will  doubtless  ask  what  is  the  practical  outlook  of  all 
this?  whether  it  leads  anywhere  in  the  direction  of  bread  and 
cheese  ?    To  this  also  I  can  g^ve  a  tolerably  satisfactory  answer. 

As  you  won't  have  a  Professor  of  Natural  History  at  Syd- 
ney— ^to  my  great  sorrow — I  have  gone  in  as  a  candidate  for  a 
Professorial  chair  at  the  other  end  of  the  world,  Toronto  in 
Canada.  In  England  there  is  nothing  to  be  done — it  is  the  most 
hopeless  prospect  I  know  of;  of  course  the  Service  oflFers  noth- 
ing for  me  except  irretrievable  waste  of  time,  and  the  scientific 
appointments  are  so  few  and  so  poor  that  they  are  not  tempt- 
ing. .  .  . 

Had  the  Sydney  University  been  carried  out  as  originally 
proposed,  I  should  certainly  have  become  a  candidate  for  the 

*  He  lectured  on  this  subject  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  1852. 


i85i  SCIENCE   HIS  VOCATION  iqi 

Natural  History  Chair.  I  know  no  finer  field  for  exertion  for 
any  naturalist  than  Sydney  Harbour  itself.  Should  such  a  Pro- 
fessorship be  hereafter  established,  I  trust  you  will  jog  the 
memory  of  my  Australian  friends  in  my  behalf.  I  have  finally 
decided  that  my  vocation  is  science,  and  I  have  made  up  my 
mind  to  the  comparative  poverty  which  is  its  necessary  adjunct, 
and  to  the  no  less  certain  seclusion  from  the  ordinary  pleasures 
and  rewards  of  men.  I  say  this  without  the  slightest  idea  that 
there  is  anything  to  be  enthusiastic  about  in  either  science  or 
its  professors.  A  year  behind  the  scenes  is  quite  enough  to 
disabuse  one  of  all  rose-pink  illusions. 

But  it  is  equally  clear  to  me  that  for  a  man  of  my  tempera- 
ment, at  any  rate,  the  sole  secret  of  getting  through  this  life 
with  anything  like  contentment  is  to  have  full  scope  for  the 
development  of  one's  faculties.  Science  alone  seems  to  me  to 
afford  this  scope — Law,  Divinity,  Physic,  and  Politics  being  in 
a  state  of  chaotic  vibration  between  utter  humbug  and  utter 
scepticism. 

There  is  a  great  stir  in  the  scientific  world  at  present  about 
who  is  to  occupy  Konig's  place  at  the  British  Museum,  and 
whether  the  whole  establishment  had  better  not,  quoad  Zoology, 
b^  remodelled  and  placed  under  Owen's  superintendence.  The 
heart-burnings  and  jealousies  about  this  matter  are  beyond  all 
conception.  Owen  is  both  feared  and  hated,  and  it  is  predicted 
that  if  Gray  and  he  come  to  be  officers  of  the  same  institution, 
in  a  year  or  two  the  total  result  will  be  a  caudal  vertebra  of 
each  remaining  after  the  manner  of  the  Kilkenny  cats. 

However,  I  heard  yesterday,  upon  what  professed  to  be  very 
good  authority,  that  Owen  would  not  leave  the  College  under 
any  circumstances. 

It  is  astonishing  with  what  an  intense  feeling  of  hatred 
Owen  is  regarded  by  the  majority  of  his  contemporaries,  with 
Mantell  as  arch-hater.  The  truth  is,  he  is  the  superior  of  most, 
and  does  not  conceal  that  he  knows  it,  and  it  must  be  confessed 
that  he  does  some  very  ill-natured  tricks  now  and  then.  A 
striking  specimen  of  one  is  to  be  found  in  his  article  on  Lyell 
in  the  last  Quarterly,  where  he  pillories  poor  Quekett — a  most 
inoffensive  man  and  his  own  immediate  subordinate — in  a  man- 
ner not  more  remarkable  for  its  severity  than  for  its  bad  taste. 
That  review  has  done  him 'much  harm  in  the  estimation  of 
thinking  men — and  curiously  enough,  since  it  was  written,  rep- 
tiles have  been  found  in  the  old  red  sandstone,  and  insectivo- 
rous mammals  in  the  Trias !    Owen  is  an  able  man,  but  to  my 


I02  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vii 

mind  not  so  great  as  he  thinks  himself.  He  can  only  work  in 
the  concrete  from  bone  to  bone,  in  abstract  reasoning  he  be- 
comes lost — witness  "  Parthenogenesis  "  which  he  told  me  he 
considered  one  of  the  best  things  he  had  done ! 

He  has,  however,  been  very  civil  to  me,  and  I  am  as  grate- 
ful as  it  is  possible  to  be  towards  a  man  with  whom  I  feel  it 
necessary  to  be  always  on  my  guard. 

Quite  another  being  is  the  other  leader  of  Zoological  Science 
in  this  country — I  mean  Edward  Forbes,  Paleontologist  to  the 
Geological  Survey.  More  especially  a  Zoologist  and  a  Geologist 
than  a  Comparative  Anatomist,  he  has  more  claims  to  the  title 
of  a  Philosophic  Naturalist  than  any  man  I  know  of  in  England. 
A  man  of  letters  and  an  artist,  he  has  not  merged  the  man  in  the 
man  of  science — ^he  has  sympathies  for  all,  and  an  earnest,  truth- 
seeking,  thoroughly  genial  disposition  which  win  for  him  your 
affection  as  well  as  your  respect.  Forbes  has  more  influence  by 
his  personal  weight  and  example  upon  the  rising  generation  of 
scientific  naturalists  than  Owen  will  have  if  he  write  from  now 
till  Doomsday. 

Personally  I  am  greatly  indebted  to  him  (though  the  opinion 
I  have  just  expressed  is  that  of  the  world  in  general).  During 
my  absence  he  superintended  the  publication  of  my  paper,  and 
from  the  moment  of  my  arrival  until  now  he  has  given  me  all 
the  help  one  man  can  give  another.  Why  he  should  have  done 
so  I  do  not  know,  as  when  I  left  England  I  had  only  spoken 
to  him  once. 

The  rest  of  the  naturalists  stand  far  below  these  two  in 
learning,  originality,  and  grasp  of  mind.  Goodsir  of  Edinburgh 
should  I  suppose  come  next,  but  he  can't  write  intelligibly.  Dar- 
win might  be  anything  if  he  had  good  health.  Bell  is  a  good  man 
in  all  the  senses  of  the  word,  but  wants  qualities  2  and  3.  New- 
port is  a  laborious  man,  but  wants  i  and  3.  Grant  and  Rymer 
Jones — arcades  amho — have  mistaken  their  vocation. 

My  old  chief  Richardson  is  a  man  of  men,  but  troubles  him- 
self little  with  anything  but  detail  zoology.  What  think  you  of 
his  getting  married  for  the  third  time  just  before  his  last  ex- 
pedition? I  hardly  know  by  which  step  he  approved  himself 
the  bolder  man. 

I  think  I  have  now  fulfilled  my  promise  of  supplying  you 
with  a  little  scientific  scandal — and  if  this  long  epistle  has  repaid 
your  trouble  in  getting  through  it,  I  am  content. 

Believe  me,  I  have  not  forgotten,  nor  ever  shall  forget,  your 
kindness  to  me  at  a  time  when  a  little  appreciation  and  encour- 


1851  THE  SCIENTIFIC  WORLD  OF   1851  103 

agement  were  more  grateful  to  me  and  of  more  service  than 
they  will  perhaps  ever  be  again.  I  have  done  my  best  to  jus- 
tify you. 

I  send  copies  of  all  the  papers  I  have  published  with  one 
exception,  of  which  I  have  none  separate.  Of  the  Royal  Society 
papers  I  send  a  double  set  Will  you  be  kind  enough  to  give 
one  with  my  kind  regards  and  remembrances  to  Dr.  Nicholson  ? 
I  feel  I  ought  to  have  written  to  him  before  leaving  Sydney, 
but  I  trust  he  will  excuse  my  not  having  done  so. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  if  you  can  find  time  to  write. — Ever 
yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

W.  Macleay,  Esq. 

PS. — Muller  has  just  made  a  most  extraordinary  discovery, 
no  less  than  the  generation  of  Molluscs  from  Holothuriae!  !  ! 
You  will  find  a  translation  of  his  paper  by  me  in  the  Annals  for 
January  1852. 
Dec.  13,  1851. 

To  HIS  Sister 

Maj^  20,  185 1. 

.  .  .  Owen  has  been  amazingly  civil  to  me,  and  it  was 
through  his  writing  to  the  First  Lord  that  I  got  my  present 
appointment.  He  is  a  queer  fish,  more  odd  in  appearance  than 
ever  .  .  •  and  more  bland  in  manner.  He  is  so  frightfully  polite 
that  I  never  feel  thoroughly  at  home  with  him.  He  got  me  to 
furnish  him  with  sonae  notes  for  the  second  edition  of  the 
Admiralty  Manual  of  Scientific  Inquiry,  and  I  find  that  in  it 
Darwin  and  I  (comparisons  are  odorous)  figure  as  joint  au- 
thorities on  some  microscopic  matters !  I 

Professor  Forbes,  however,  is  my  great  ally,  a  first-rate  man, 
thoroughly  in  earnest  and  disinterested,  and  ready  to  give  his 
time  and  influence — which  is  great — to  help  any  man  who  is 
working  for  the  cause.  To  him  I  am  indebted  for  the  super- 
vision of  papers  that  were  published  in  my  absence,  for  many 
introductions,  and  most  valuable  information  and  assistance,- 
and  all  done  in  such  a  way  as  not  to  oppress  one  or  give  one 
any  feeling  of  patronage,  which  you  know  (so  much  do  I  retain 
of  my  old  self)  would  not  suit  me.  My  notions  are  diametrically 
opposed  to  his  in  some  matters,  and  he  helps  me  to  oppose  him. 
The  other  night,  or  rather  nights,  for  it  took  three,  I  had  a  long 
paper  read  at  the  Royal  Society  which  opposed  some  of  his 
views,  and  he  got  up  and  spoke  in  the  highest  terms  of  it  aftef- 
8 


I04 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY 


y^ards.  This  is  all  as  it  should  be.  I  can  reverence  such  a 
man  and  yet  respect  myself. 

I  have  been  aspiring  to  great  honours  since  I  wrote  to  you 
last,  to  wit  the  F.R.S.,  and  found  no  little  to  my  astonishment 
that  I  had  a  chance  of  it,  and  so  went  in.  I  must  tell  you  that 
they  have  made  the  admission  more  difficult  than  it  used  to  be. 
Candidates  are  not  elected  by  the  Society  alone,  but  fifteen 
only  a  year  are  selected  by  a  committee,  and  then  elected  as  a 
matter  of  course  by  the  Society.  This  year  there  were  thirty- 
eight  candidates.  I  did  not  expecf  to  come  in  till  next  year,  but 
I  find  I  am  one  of  the  selected.  I  fancy  I  shall  be  the  junior 
Fellow  by  some  years.  Singularly  enough,  among  the  non- 
selected  candidates  were  Ward,  the  man  who  conducted  the 
Botanical  Honours  Examination  of  Apothecaries'  Hall  nine 
years  ago,  and  Bryson,  the  surgeon  of  the  Fisguard,  i,e,  nomi- 
nally my  immediate  superior,  and  who,  as  he  frequently  acts 
as  Sir  Wm.  Burnett's  deputy,  will  very  likely  examine  me  when 
I  pass  for  Surgeon  R,N.!!  That  is  awkward  and  must  be  an- 
noying to  him,  but  it  is  not  my  fault.  I  did  not  ask  for  a  single 
name  that  appeared  upon  my  certificate.  Owen's  name  and 
Carpenter's,  which  were  to  have  been  appended,  were  not  added. 
Forbes,  my  recommender,  told  me  beforehand  not  to  expect  to 
get  in  this  year,  and  did  not  use  his  influence,  and  so  I  have 
no  intriguing  to  reproach  myself  with  or  to  be  reproached  with. 
The  only  drawback  is  that  it  will  cost  me  £14,  which  is  more 
than  I  can  very  well  afford. 

By  the  way,  I  have  not  told  you  that  after  staying  for  about 
five  months  with  George,  I  found  that  if  I  meant  to  work  in 
earnest  his  home  was  not  the  place,  so,  much  to  my  regret, — 
for  they  made  me  very  happy  there, — I  summoned  resolution 
and  The  Boy's  Own  Book  and  took  a  den  of  my  own,  whence 
I  write  at  present.  You  had  better,  however,  direct  to  George, 
as  I  am  going  to  move  and  don't  know  how  long  I  may  remain 
at  my  next  habitation.  At  present  I  am  living  in  the  Pailc  RosmI* 
but  I  find  it  too  noisy  and  am  going  to  St.  Anne's  Gardens,  St 
John's  Wood,  close  to  my  mother's,  against  whose  forays  I 
shall  have  to  fortify  myself. 

It  was  a  minor  addition  to  his  many  troubles  that  after  a 
•  time  Huxley  found  a  grudging  and  jealous  spirit  exhibited 
in  some  quarters  towards  his  success,  and  influence  used  to 
prevent  any  further  advance  that  might  endanger  the  exist- 
ing balance  of  power  in  the  scientific  world.    But  this  could 


1852  JEALOUSY  OF   HIS   RISE  105 

be  battled  with  directly;  indeed  it  was  rather  a  relief  to 
have  an  opportunity  for  action  instead  of  sitting  still  to  wait 
the  results  of  uncertain  elections.  The  qualities  requisite  for 
such  a  contest  he  possessed,  in  a  high  ideal  of  the  dignity  o£ 
science  as  an  instrument  of  truth ;  a  standard  of  veracity  in 
scientific  workers  to  which  all  should  subordinate  their  per- 
sonal ambitions ;  a  disregard  of  authority  as  such  unless  its 
claims  were  verified  by  indisputable  fact;  and  as  a  begin- 
ning, the  will  to  subject  himself  to  his  own  most  rigid  canons 
of  accuracy,  thoroughness,  and  honesty ;  then  to  maintain 
his  principle  and  defend  his  position  against  all  attempts  at 
browbeating. 

March  5,  1852. 

I  told  you  I  was  very  busy,  and  I  must  tell  you  what  I  am 
about  and  you  will  believe  me.  I  have  just  finished  a  Memoir 
for  the  Royal  Society,*  which  has  taken  me  a  world  of  time, 
thought,  and  reading,  and  is,  perhaps,  the  best  thing  I  have  done 
yet  It  will  not  be  read  till  May,  and  I  do  not  know  whether 
they  will  print  it  or  not  afterwards;  that  will  require  care  and 
a  little  manoeuvring  on  my  part.  You  have  no  notion  of  the 
intrigues  that  go  on  in  this  blessed  world  of  science.  Science  is, 
I  fear,  no  purer  than  any  other  region  of  human  activity ;  though 
it  should  be.  Merit  alone  is  very  little  good ;  it  must  be  backed 
by  tact  and  knowledge  of  the  world  to  do  very  much. 

For  instance,  I  know  that  the  paper  I  have  just  sent  in  is 
very  original  and  of  some  importance,  and  I  am  equally  sure  that 

if  it  is  referred  to  the  judgment  of  my  "  particular  friend  " 

that  it  will  not  be  published.  He  won't  be  able  to  say  a  word 
against  it,  but  he  will  pooh-pooh  it  to  a  dead  certainty. 

You  will  ask  with  some  wonderment.  Why?  Because  for 
the  last  twenty  years has  been  regarded  as  the  great  au- 
thority on  these  matters,  and  has  had  no  one  to  tread  on  his 
heels,  until  at  last,  I  think,  he  has  come  to  look  upon  the  Natural 
World  as  his  special  preserve,  and  "  no  poachers  allowed."  So 
I  must  manoeuvre  a  little  to  get  my  poor  memoir  kept  out  01 
his  hands. 

The  necessity  for  these  little  stratagems  utterly  disgusts  me. 
I  would  so  willingly  reverence  and  trust  any  man  of  high  stand- 
ing and  ability.    I  am  so  utterly  unable  to  comprehend  this  petty 

♦  **  On  the   Morphology  of    the    Ce'phalous   Mollusca/ '  ScientiJU 
Memoirs ^  vol.  1.  p.  152. 


I06  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  vn 

greediness.  And  yet  withal  you  will  smile  at  my  perversity.  I 
have  a  certain  pleasure  in  overcoming  these  obstacles,  and  fight- 
ing these  folks  with  their  own  weapons.  I  do  so  long  to  be  able 
to  trust  men  implicitly.  I  have  sudi  a  horror  of  all  this  literary 
pettifogging.  I  could  be  so  content  myself,  if  the  necessity  of 
making  a  position  would  allow  it,  to  work  on  anonymously,  but 

I  see  is  determined  not  to  let  either  me  or  any  one  else 

rise  if  he  can  help  it.  Let  him  beware.  On  my  own  subjects 
I  am  his  master,  and  am  quite  ready  to  fight  half  a  dozen 
dragons.  And  although  he  has  a  bitter  pen,  I  flatter  myself  that 
on  occasions  I  can  match  him  in  that  department  also. 

But  I  was  telling  you  how  busy  I  am.  I  am  getting  a 
memoir  ready  for  the  Zoological  Society,  and  working  at  my 
lecture  for  the  Royal  Institution,  which  I  want  to  make  striking 
and  original,  as  it  is  a  good  opportunity,  besides  doing  a  trans- 
lation now  and  then  for  one  of  the  Journals.  Besides  this,  I 
am  working  at  the  British  Museum  to  make  a  catalogue  of  some 
creatures  there.  All  these  things  take  a  world  of  time  and 
labour,  and  yield  next  to  no  direct  profit ;  but  they  bring  me  into 
contact  with  all  sorts  of  men,  in  a  very  independent  position, 
and  I  am  told,  and  indeed  hope,  that  something  must  arise  from 
it.  So  fair  a  prospect  opens  out  before  me  if  I  can  only  wait. 
I  am  beginning  to  know  what  work  means,  and  see  how 
much  more  may  be  done  by  steady,  unceasing,  and  well-directed 
efforts.  I  thrive  upon  it  too.  I  am  as  well  as  ever  I  was  in 
my  life,  and  the  more  I  work  the  better  my  temper  seems  to  be. 

April  30,  1852,  III  P.M. 

I  have  just  returned  from  giving  my  lecture  *  at  the  Royal 
Institution,  of  which  I  told  you  in  my  last  letter. 

I  had  got  very  nervous  about  it,  and  my  poor  mother's  death 
had  greatly  upset  my  plans  for  working  it  out. 

It  was  the  first  lecture  I  had  ever  given  in  my  life,  and  to 
what  is  considered  the  best  audience  in  London.  As  nothing 
ever  works  up  my  energies  but  a  high  flight,  I  had  chosen  a 
very  difficult  abstract  point,  in  my  view  of  which  I  stand  almost 
alone.  When  I  took  a  glimpse  into  the  theatre  and  saw  it  full 
of  faces,  I  did  feel  most  amazingly  uncomfortable.  I  can  now 
quite  understand  what  it  is  to  be  going  to  be  hanged,  and  noth- 
ing but  the  necessity  of  the  case  prevented  me  from  running 
away. 

*  "  On  Animal  Individuality,"  ScUnti/u  Mtmoirs^  vol.  i.  p.  146,  cp. 
p.  88,  supra. 


1852  DEATH   OF   HIS   MOTHER  107 

However,  when  the  hour  struck,  in  I  marched,  and  began  to 
deliver  my  discourse.  For  ten  minutes  I  did  not  quite  know 
where  I  was,  but  by  degrees  I  got  used  to  it,  and  gradually 
gained  perfect  command  of  myself  and  of  my  subject.  I  believe 
I  contrived  to  interest  my  audience,  and  upon  the  wliole  I  think 
I  may  say  that  this  essay  was  successful. 

Tliank  Heaven  I  can  say  so,  for  though  it  is  no  great  matter 
succeeding,  failing  would  have  been  a  bitter  annoyance  to  me. 
It  has  put  me  comfortably  at  my  ease  with  regard  to  all  future 
lecturings.  After  the  Royal  Institution  there  is  no  audience  I 
shall  ever  fear. 

May  9. 

The  foolish  state  of  excitement  into  which  I  allowed  myself 
to  get  the  other  day  completely  did  for  me,  and  I  have  hardly 
done  anything  since  except  sleep  a  great  deal.  It  is  a  strange 
thing  that  with  all  my  will  I  cannot  control  my  physical  organi- 
sation. 

To  HIS  Sister 

April  17,  1852. 

...  I  fear  nothing  will  have  prepared  you  to  hear  that  one 
so  active  in  body  and  mind  as  our  poor  mother  was  has  been 
taken  from  us.    But  so  it  is.  .  .  . 

It  was  very  strange  that  before  leaving  London  my  mother, 
possessed  by  a  strange  whim,  as  I  thought,  distributed  to  many 
of  us  little  things  belonging  to  her.  I  laughed  at  her  for  what 
I  called  her  "  testamentary  disposition,"  little  dreaming  that  the 
words  were  prophetic. 

[The  summons  to  those  of  the  family  in  London  reached 
them  late,  and  their  arrival  was  made  still  later  by  inconvenient 
trains  and  a  midnight  drive,  so  that  all  had  long  been  over  when 
they  came  to  Earning  in  Kent,  where  the  elder  Huxleys  had 
just  settled  near  their  son  James.] 

Our  mother  had  died  at  half-past  four,  falling  gradually 
into  a  more  and  more  profound  insensibility.  She  was  thus 
happily  spared  the  pain  of  fruitlessly  wishing  us  round  her,  in 
her  last  moments;  and  as  the  hand  of  Death  was  upon  her,  I 
know  not  that  it  could  have  fallen  more  lightly. 

I  oflFer  you  no  consolation,  my  dearest  sister,  for  I  know  of 
none.  There  are  things  which  each  must  bear  as  he  best  may 
with  the  strength  that  has  been  allotted  to  him.  Would  that  I 
were  near  you  to  soften  the  blow  by  the  sympathy  which  we 
should  have  in  common.  ... 


I08  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vii 

May  3,  1852. 

So  much  occupation  has  crowded  upon  me  between  the  be- 
ginning of  this  letter  and  the  present  time  that  I  have  been 
unable  to  finish  it  I  had  undertaken  to  give  a  lecture  at  the 
Royal  Institution  on  the  30th  April.  It  was  on  a  difficult  sub- 
ject, requiring  a  good  deal  of  thought;  and  as  it  was  my  first 
appearance  and  before  the  best  audience  in  London,  you  may 
imagine  how  anxious  and  nervous  I  was,  and  how  completely  I 
was  obliged  to  abstract  my  thoughts  from  everything  else. 

However,  I  am  happy  to  say  it  is  well  over.  There  was  a 
very  good  audience — Faraday,  Prof.  Forbes,  Dr.  Forbes, 
Wharton  Jones,  and  [a]  whole  lot  of  "  nobs,"  among  my  audi- 
tors. I  had  made  up  my  mind  all  day  to  break  down,  and  then 
go  and  hang  myself  privately.  And  so  you  may  imagine  that 
I  entered  the  theatre  with  a  very  pale  face,  and  a  heart  beating 
like  a  sledge-hammer  nineteen  to  the  dozen.  For  the  first  five 
minutes  I  did  not  know  very  clearly  what  I  was  about,  but  by 
degrees  I  got  possession  of  myself  and  of  my  subject,  and  did 
not  care  for  anybody.  I  have  had  "golden  opinions  from  all 
sorts  of  men  "  about  it,  so  I  suppose  I  may  tell  you  I  have  suc- 
ceeded. I  don't  think,  however,  that  I  ever  felt  so  thoroughly 
used  up  in  my  life  as  I  did  for  two  days  afterwards.  There  is 
one  comfort,  I  shall  never  be  nervous  again  about  any  audience ; 
but  at  one's  first  attempt,  to  stand  in  the  place  of  Faraday  and 
such  big-wigs  might  excuse  a  little  weakness. 

The  way  is  clear  before  me,  if  my  external  circumstances 
will  only  allow  me  to  persevere;  but  I  fully  expect  that  I  shall 
have  to  give  up  my  dreams. 

Science  in  England  does  everything — but  .pay.  You  may 
earn  praise  but  not  pudding. 

I  have  helping  hands  held  out  to  me  on  all  sides,  but  there 
is  nothing  to  help  me  to.  Last  year  I  became  a  candidate  for  a 
Professorship  at  Toronto.  I  took  an  infinity  of  trouble  over 
the  thing,  and  got  together  a  mass  of  testimonials  and  recom- 
mendations, much  better  than  I  had  any  right  to  expect.  From 
that  time  to  this  I  have  heard  nothing  of  the  business — a  result 
for  which  I  care  the  less,  as  I  believe  the  chair  will  be  given 
to  a  brother  of  one  of  the  members  of  the  Canadian  ministry, 
who  is,  I  hear,  a  candidate.  Such  a  qualification  as  that  is,  of 
course,  better  than  all  the  testimonials  in  the  world. 

I  think  I  told  you  when  I  last  wrote  that  I  was  expecting  a 
grant  from  Government  to  publish  the  chief  part  of  my  work, 
done  while  away.    I  am  expecting  it  still.    I  got  tired  of  waiting 


1852  THE   IRONY  OF  SUCCESS  109 

the  other  day  and  wrote  to  the  Duke  of  Northumberland,  who 
is  at  present  First  Lx)rd  of  the  Admiralty,  upon  the  subject. 
His  Grace  has  taken  the  matter  up,  and  I  hope  now  to  get  it 
done. 

With  all  this,  however.  Time  runs  on.  People  look  upon 
me,  I  suppose,  as  a  'Wery  promising  young  man,''  and  perhaps 
envy  my  "  success,"  and  I  all  the  while  am  cursing  my  stars 
that  my  Pegasus  wUl  fly  aloft  instead  of  pulling  slowly  along 
in  some  respectable  gig,  and  getting  his  oats  like  any  other 
praiseworthy  cart-horse. 

It's  a  charming  piece  of  irony  altogether.  It  is  two  years 
yesterday  since  I  left  Sydney  harbour — and  of  course  as  long 
since  I  saw  Nettie.  I  am  getting  thoroughly  tired  of  our  sepa- 
ration, and  I  think  she  is,  though  the  dear  little  soul  is  ready  to 
do  anything  for  my  sake,  and  yet  I  dare  not  face  the  stagnation 
— the  sense  of  having  failed  in  the  whole  purpose  of  my  exist- 
ence— ^which  would,  I  know,  sooner  or  later  beset  me,  even  with 
her,  if  I  forsake  my  present  object  Can  you  wonder  with  all 
this,  my  dearest  Lizzie,  that  often  as  I  long  for  your  brave  heart 
and  clear  head  to  support  and  advise  me,  I  yet  rarely  feel  in- 
clined to  write?  Pray  write  to  me  more  often  than  you  have 
done;  tell  me  all  about  yourself  and  the  Doctor  and  your  chil- 
dren. They  must  be  growing  up  fast,  and  Florry  must  be  get- 
ting beyond  the  "  Bird  of  Paradise  "  I  promised  her.  Love 
and  kisses  to  all  of  them,  and  kindest  remembrances  to  the  Doc- 
tor.— Ever  your  affectionate  brother,  T.  H.  Huxley. 


To  Miss  Heathorn 

iViw.  13,  1852. 

Going  last  week  to  the  Royal  Society's  library  for  a  book, 
and  like  the  boy  in  church  "  thinkin'  o'  naughten,"  when  I  went 
in,  Weld,  the  Assistant  Secretary,  said,  "  Well,  I  congratulate 
you."  I  confess  I  did  not  see  at  that  moment  what  any  mortal 
man  had  to  congratulate  me  about.  I  had  a  deuced  bad  cold, 
with  rheumatism  in  my  head;  it  was  a  beastly  November  day 
and  I  was  very  grumpy,  so  I  inquired  in  a  state  of  mild  sur- 
prise what  might  be  the  matter.  Whereupon  I  learnt  that  the 
Medal  had  been  conferred  at  the  meeting  of  the  Council  on  the 
day  before.  I  was  very  pleased  .  .  .  and  I  thought  you  would 
be  so  too,  and  I  thought  moreover  that  it  was  a  fine  lever  to 
help  us  on,  and  if  I  could  have  sent  a  letter  to  you  immediately 
I  should  have  sat  down  and  have  written  one  to  you  on  the  spot. 


no  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vii 

As  it  is  I  have  waited  for  official  confirmation  and  a  convenient 
season. 

And  now  .  .  .  shall  I  be  very  naughty  and  make  a  con- 
fession? The  thing  that  a  fortnight  ago  (before  I  got  it)  I 
thought  so  much  of,  I  give  you  my  word  I  do  not  care  a  pin 
for.  I  am  sick  of  it  and  ashamed  of  having  thought  so  much 
of  it,  and  the  congratulations  I  get  give  me  a  sort  of  internal 
sardonic  grin.  I  think  this  has  come  about  partly  because  I 
did  not  get  the  official  confirmation  of  what  I  had  heard  for 
some  days,  and  with  my  habit  of  facing  the  ill  side  of  things 
I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  Weld  had  made  a  mistake,  and  I 
went  in  thought  through  the  whole  enormous  mortification  of 
having  to  explain  to  those  whom  I  had  mentioned  it  that  it  was 
quite  a  mistake.  I  found  that  all  this,  when  I  came  to  look  at 
it,  was  by  no  means  so  dreadful  as  it  seemed — quite  bearable  in 
short — and  then  I  laughed  at  myself  and  have  cared  nothing 
about  the  whole  concern  ever  since.  In  truth  ...  I  do  not 
think  that  I  am  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  word  ambitious.  I  have 
an  enormous  longing  after  the  highest  and  best  in  all  shapes — 
a  longing  which  haunts  me  and  is  the  demon  which  ever  impels 
me  to  work,  and  will  let  me  have  no  rest  unless  I  am  doing  his 
behests.  The  honours  of  men  I  value  so  far  as  they  are  evi- 
dences of  power,  but  with  the  cynical  mistrust  of  their  judg- 
ment and  my  own  worthiness,  which  always  haunts  me,  I  put 
very  little  faith  in  them.  Their  praise  makes  me  sneer  inwardly. 
God  forgive  me  if  I  do  them  any  great  wrong. 

...  I  feel  and  know  that  all  the  rewards  and  honours  in  the 
world  will  ever  be  worthless  for  me  as  soon  as  they  are  obtained. 
I  know  that  always,  as  now,  they  will  make  me  more  sad  than 
joyful.  I  know  that  nothing  that  could  be  done  would  give  me 
the  pure  and  heartfelt  joy  and  peace  of  mind  that  your  love  has 
given  me,  and,  please  God,  shall  give  for  many  a  long  year  to 
come,  and  yet  my  demon  says  work !  work !  you  shall  not  even 
love  unless  you  work. 

Not  blinded  by  any  vanity,  then,  I  hope  .  .  .  but  viewing 
this  stroke  of  fortune  as  respects  its  public  estimation  only,  I 
think  I  must  look  upon  the  award  of  this  medal  as  the  turning- 
point  of  my  life,  as  the  finger-post  teaching  me  as  clearly  as 
anything  can  what  is  the  true  career  that  lies  open  before  me. 
For  whatever  may  be  my  own  private  estimation  of  it,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  as  to  the  general  feeling  about  this  thing,  and  in 
case  of  my  candidature  for  any  office  it  would  have  the  very 
greatest  weight.    And  as  you  will  have  seen  by  my  last  letter, 


1852  RECEIVES  THE   ROYAL  MEDAL  m 

it  only  strengthens  and  confirms  the  conclusion  I  had  come  to. 
Bid  me  God-speed  then  ...  it  is  all  I  want  to  labour  cheerfully. 

Nov.  28. 

.  .  .  You  will  hear  all  the  details  of  the  Great  Duke's  state 
funeral  from  the  papers  much  better  than  I  can  tell  you  them. 
I  went  to  the  Cathedral  (St.  Paul's)  and  had  the  good  fortune 
to  get  a  capital  seat — ^in  front,  close  to  the  great  door  by  which 
every  one  entered.  It  was  bitter  cold,  a  keen  November  wind 
blowing  right  in,  and  as  I  was  there  from  eight  till  three,  I 
expected  nothing  less  than  rheumatic  fever  the  next  day ;  how- 
ever I  didn't  get  it.  It  was  pitiful  to  see  the  poor  old  Marquis 
of  Anglesey — a  year  older  than  the  Duke — standing  with  bare 
head  in  the  keen  wind  close  to  me  for  more  than  three  quarters 
of  an  hour.  It  was  impressive  enough  —  the  great  interior 
lighted  up  by  a  single  line  of  light  running  along  the  whole  cir- 
cuit of  the  cornice,  and  another  encircling  the  dome,  and  casting 
a  curious  illumination  over  the  masses  of  uniforms  which  filled 
the  great  space.  The  best  of  our  people  were  there  and  passed 
close  to  me,  but  the  only  face  that  made  any  great  impression 
upon  my  memory  was  that  of  Sir  Chas.  Napier,  the  conqueror 
of  Scinde.  Fancy  a  very  large,  broad-winged,  and  fierce-look- 
ing hawk  in  uniform.    Such  an  eye ! 

When  the  coffin  and  the  mourners  had  passed  I  closed  up 
with  the  soldiers  and  went  up  under  the  dome,  where  I  heard 
the  magnificent  service  in  full  perfection. 

All  of  it,  however,  was  but  stage  trickery  compared  with  the 
noble  simplicity  of  the  old  man's  life.  How  the  old  stoic,  used 
to  his  iron  bed  and  hard  hair  pillow,  would  have  smiled  at  all 
the  pomp— submitting  to  that,  however,  and  all  other  things 
necessary  to  the  "  carrying  on  of  the  Queen's  Government." 

I  send  Tennyson's  ode  by  way  of  packing — it  is  not  worth 
much  more,  the  only  decent  passages  to  my  mind  being  those 
I  have  marked. 

The  day  after  to-morrow  I  go  to  have  my  medal  presented 
and  to  dine  and  make  a  speech. 

The  Royal  Medal  was  conferred  on  November  30,  and 
the  medallists  were  entertained  at  the  anniversary  dinner  of 
the  Society  on  that  day.  In  the  words  with  which  the 
President,  the  Earl  of  Rosse,  accompanied  the  presentation 
of  the  medal,  "  it  is  not  difficult,"  writes  Sir  M.  Foster, 
"  reading  between  the  lines,  to  recognise  the  appreciation  of 


112  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vii 

a  new  spirit  of  anatomical  inquiry,  not  wholly  free  from  a 
timorous  apprehension  as  to  its  complete  validity."  *  For 
the  difference  between  this  and  the  labours  of  the  greatest 
English  comparative  anatomist  of  the  time,  whose  detailed 
work  was  of  the  highest  value,  but  whose  generalisations 
and  speculations,  based  on  the  philosophy  of  Oken,  proved 
barren  and  fruitless,  lay  in  the  fact  that  Huxley,  led  to  it 
doubtless  by  his  solitary  readings  in  his  Charing  Cross  days, 
had  taken  up  the  method  of  von  Baer  and  Johannes  Miiller, 
then  almost  unknown,  or  at  least  unused  in  England — "  the 
method  which  led  the  anatomist  to  face  his  problems  in  the 
spirit  in  which  the  physicist  faced  his." 

He  had  been  warned  by  Forbes  not  to  speak  too  strongly 
about  the  dilatoriness  of  the  Government  in  the  matter  of 
the  grant,  so  he  writes :  "  I  will  *  roar  you  like  any  sucking 
dove '  at  the  dinner,  though  I  felt  tempted  otherwise."  On 
December  i  he  tells  how  he  carried  out  this  advice. 

MV  DEAR  Forbes — You  will,  I  know,  like  to  learn  how  I  got 
on  yesterday.  The  President's  address  to  me  had  been  drawn 
up  by  Bell.  It  was,  of  course,  too  flattering,  but  he  had  taken 
hold  of  the  right  points  in  my  work — at  least  I  thought  so. 

Bunsen  spoke  very  well  for  Humboldt. 

There  was  a  capital  congregation  at  the  dinner — sixty  or 
seventy  Fellows  there.  .  .  . 

When  it  came  to  my  turn  to  return  thanks,  I  believe  I  made 
a  very  tolerable  speechification,  at  least  everybody  says  so.  Lord 
Rosse  had  alluded  to  **  science  having  to  take  care  of  itself  in 
this  country,"  and  in  winding  up  I  gave  them  a  small  screed 
upon  that  text.  That  you  may  see  I  kept  your  caution  in  mind, 
I  will  tell  you  as  nearly  as  may  be  what  I  said.  I  told  them 
that  I  could  not  conceive  that  anything  I  had  hitherto  done 
merited  the  honour  of  that  day  (I  looked  so  preciously  meek  over 

♦  *'In  these  papers  (on  the  Medusa)  j'ou  have  for  the  first  time 
fully  developed  their  structure,  and  laid  the  foundation  of  a  rational 
theory  for  their  classification."  **  In  your  second  paper  *  On  the  Anat- 
omy of  Sal  pa  and  Pyrosoma,'  the  phenomena,  etc.,  have  received  the 
most  ingenious  and  elaborate  elucidation,  and  have  given  rise  to  a 
process  of  reasoning,  the  results  of  which  can  scarcely  yet  be  antici- 
pated, but  must  bear  in  a  very  important  degree  upon  some  of  the 
most  abstruse  points  of  what  may  be  called  transcendental  physiology.*' 
See  I^oj^a/  Society,  Obituary  Notices,  vol.  lix.  p.  1. 


i853  HIS   HABITS  II3 

this),  but  that  I  was  glad  to  be  able  to  say  that  I  had  so  much 
unpublished  material  as  to  make  me  hopeful  of  one  day  dimin- 
ishing the  debt.  I  then  said,  "  The  Government  of  this  country, 
of  this  great  country,  has  been  two  years  debating  whether  it 
should  grant  the  three  hundred  pounds  necessary  for  the  pub- 
lication of  these  researches.  I  have  been  too  long  used  to  strict 
discipline  to  venture  to  criticise  any  act  of  my  superiors,  but 
I  venture  to  hope  that  before  long,  in  consequence  of  the  exer- 
tions of  Lord  Rosse,  of  the  President  of  the  British  Association, 
and  the  goodwill,  which  I  gratefully  acknowledge,  of  the  present 
Lord  of  the  Admiralty,  I  shall  be  able  to  lay  before  you  some- 
thing more  worthy  of  to-day's  award." 

I  had  my  doubts  how  the  nobs  would  take  it,  but  both  Lord 
Rosse  and  Sabine  warmly  commended  my  speech  and  regretted 
I  had  not  said  even  more  upon  the  subject. 

Some  light  is  thrown  upon  his  habits  at  this  time  by 
the  following,  part  of  his  letter  to  Forbes  of  November 
19:— 

I  have  frequent  visits  from .    He  is  a  good  man,  but 

direfully  argumentative,  and  in  that  sense  to  me  a  bore.  Be- 
sides that,  the  creature  will  come  and  call  upon  me  at  nhie  or 
ten  o'clock  in  the  morning  before  I  am  out  of  bed,  or  if  out  of 
bed,  before  I  am  in  possession  of  my  faculties,  which  never 
arrive  before  twelve  or  one. 

This  morning  incapacity  was  of  a  piece  with  his  hatred 
of  the  breakfast-party  of  the  period.  To  go  abroad  from 
home  or  to  do  any  work  before  breakfasting  ensured  him  a 
headache  for  the  rest  of  the  day,  so  that  he  never  was  one 
of  those  risers  with  the  dawn  who  do  half  a  day's  work  be- 
fore the  rest  of  the  world  is  astir.  And  though  necessity 
often  compelled  him  to  do  with  less,  he  always  found  eight 
hours  his  proper  allowance  of  sleep. 

But  in  the  end  of  1853  we  hear  of  a  reform  in  his  ways, 
after  a  bad  bout  of  ill-health,  when  he  rises  at  eight,  goes  to 
bed  at  twelve,  and  eschews  parties  of  every  kind  as  far  as 
possible,  with  excellent  results  as  far  as  health  went. 

After  his  marriage,  however,  and  indeed  to  the  begin- 
ning of  his  last  illness,  he  always  rose  early  enough  for  an 
eight  o'clock  breakfast,  after  which  the  working  day  began, 
lasting  regularly  from  a  little  after  nine  till  midnight. 


114 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY 


4  Upper  York  Place,  St.  John's  Wood,  Feb,  6,  1853. 

Many  thanks,  my  dearest  sister,  for  your  kind  and  thought- 
ful letter — it  went  to  my  heart  no  little  that  you,  amidst  all  your 
trials  and  troubles,  should  find  time  to  thiiUc  so  wisely  and  so 
affectionately  of  mine.  Though  greatly  tempted  otherwise,  I 
have  acted  in  the  spirit  of  your  advice,  and  my  reward,  in  the 
shape  of  honours  at  any  rate,  has  not  failed  me,  as  the  Royal 
Society  gave  me  one  of  the  Royal  medals  last  year.  It's  a 
higger  one  than  I  got  under  your  auspices  so  many  years  ago, 
being  worth  £50,  but  I  don't  know  that  I  cared  so  much  about  it. 

It  was  assigned  to  me  quite  unexpectedly,  and  in  the  eyes  of 
the  world  I,  of  course,  am  greatly  the  bigger — but  I  will  confess 
to  you  privately  that  I  am  by  no  means  dilated,  and  am  the 
identical  Boy  Tom  I  was  before  I  achieved  the  attainment  of 
my  golden  porter's  badge.  Curiously  it  was  given  for  the  first 
Memoir  I  have  in  the  Royal  Society's  Transactions,  sent  home 
four  years  ago  with  no  small  fear  and  trembling,  and,  "  after 
many  days,"  returning  with  this  queer  crust  of  bread.  In  the 
speech  I  had  to  make  at  the  Anniversary  Dinner  I  grew  quite 
eloquent  on  that  point,  and  talked  of  the  dove  I  had  sent  from 
my  ark,  returning,  not  with  the  olive  branch,  but  with  a  sprig 
of  th£  bay  and  a  fruit  from  the  garden  of  the  Hesperides — a 
simile  which  I  thought  decidedly  clever,  but  which  the  audi- 
ence— distinguished  audience  I  ought  to  have  said — ^probably 
didn't,  as  they  did  not  applaud  that,  while  they  did  some  things 
I  said  which  were  incomparably  more  stupid.  This  was  in  No- 
vember, and  I  ought  to  have  written  to  you  about  it  before,  my 
dear  Lizzie,  but  for  one  thing  I  am  very  much  occupied,  and 
for  the  other  (shall  I  confess  it?)  I  was  rather  puzzled  that 
I  had  not  heard  from  you  since  I  wrote.  Now  my  useless  con- 
science, which  never  makes  me  do  anything  right  in  time,  is 
pitching  in  to  me  when  it  is  too  late. 

The  medal,  however,  must  not  be  jested  at,  as  it  is  most 
decidedly  of  practical  use  in  giving  me  a  status  in  the  eyes  of 
those  charming  people,  "practical  men,"  such  as  I  had  not 
before,  and  I  am  amused  to  find  some  of  my  friends,  whose  con- 
tempt for  my  "dreamy"  notions  was  not  small  in  time  past, 
absolutely  advising  me  to  take  a  far  more  dreamy  course  than 
I  dare  venture  upon.  However,  I  take  very  much  my  own 
course  now,  even  as  I  have  done  before — Huxley  all  over. 

However,  that  is  enough  about  myself  just  now.  In  the  next 
letter  I  will  tell  you  more  at  length  about  my  plans  and  pros- 
pects, which  are  mostly,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  only  provocative  of 


i853  "CORN   IN   EGYPT"  115 

setting  my  teeth  hard  and  saying,  " Never  mind,  I  will"  But 
what  I  write  in  a  hurry  about  and  want  you  to  do  at  once,  is 
to  write  to  me  and  tell  me  exactly  how  money  may  be  sent  safely 
to  you.  It  is  inexpedient  to  send  without  definite  directions, 
according  to  the  character  you  give  your  neighbours.  Don't 
expect  anything  vast,  but  there  is  corn  in  Egypt.  .  .  . 

Two  classes  of  people  can  I  deal  with  and  no  third.  They 
are  the  good  people — people  after  my  own  heart,  and  the  thor- 
ough men  of  the  world.  Either  of  these  I  can  act  and  sym- 
pathise with>  but  the  others,  who  are  neither  for  God  nor  for 
the  Devil,  but  for  themselves,  as  grim  old  Dante  has  it,  and 
whom  he  therefore  very  justly  puts  in  a  most  uncomfortable 
place,  I  cannot  do  with.  .  .  . 

So  Florry  is  growing  up  into  a  great  girl ;  the  child  will  not 
remember  me,  but  kiss  her  and  my  godson  for  me,  and  give  my 
love  to  them  all.  The  Lymph  shall  come  in  my  next  letter  for 
the  young  Yankee.  I  hope  the  juices  of  the  English  cow  will 
prevent  him  from  ever  acquiring  the  snuffle. 

Tell  the  Doctor  all  about  the  medal,  with  my  kindest  re- 
gards, and  believe  me,  my  dearest  Lizzie,  your  affectionate 
brother,  Tom. 

4  Upper  York  Place,  St.  John's  Wood,  April  22,  1853. 

My  dearest  Lizzie — First  let  me  congratulate  you  on  being 
safe  over  your  troubles  and  in  possession  of  another  possible 
President  I  think  it  may  be  worth  coming  over  twenty  years 
hence  on  the  possibility  of  picking  up  something  or  other  from 
one  of  my  nephews  at  Washington. 

[He  sends  some  money.]  Would  it  were  more  worth  your 
having,  but  I  have  not  as  yet  got  on  to  Tom  Tiddler's  ground  on 
this  side  of  the  water.  You  need  not  be  alarmed  about  my 
having  involved  myself  in  any  way — such  portion  of  it  as  is 
of  my  sending  has  been  conquered  by  mine  own  sword  and 
spear,  and  the  rest  came  from  Mary.*  .  .  . 

[After  giving  a  summary  of  his  struggle  with  the  Admiralty, 
he  proceeds] — If  I  were  to  tell  you  all  the  intriguing  and  hum- 
bug there  has  been  about  my  unfortunate  grant  —  which  yet 
granted — it  would  occupy  this  letter,  and  though  a  very  good 
illustration  of  the  encouragement  afforded  to  Science  in  this 
country,  would  not  be  very  amusing.  Once  or  twice  it  has  fairly 
died  out,  only  to  be  stirred  up  again  by  my  own  pertinacity. 
However,  I  have  hopes  of  it  at  last,  as  I  hear  Lord  Rosse  is 

♦  Mrs.  George  Huxley. 


Il6  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vii 

just  about  to  make  another  application  to  the  present  Govern- 
ment on  the  subject.  While  this  business  has  been  dragging 
on  of  course  I  have  not  been  idle.  I  have  four  memoirs  (on 
various  matters  in  Comparative  Anatomy)  in  the  Philosophical 
Transactions,  and  they  have  given  me  their  Fellowship  and  one 
of  the  Royal  medals.  I  have  written  a  whole  lot  of  things  for 
the  journals — reviews  for  the  British  and  Foreign  Quarterly 
Medical,  etc.  I  am  one  of  the  editors  of  Taylor's  Scientific 
Memoirs  (German  scientific  translations).  In  conjunction  with 
my  friend  Busk  I  am  translating  a  great  German  book  on  the 
Microscopical  Anatomy  of  Man,  and  I  have  engaged  to  write 
a  long  article  for  Todd's  Cyclop<Bdia.  Besides  this,  have  read 
two  long  memoirs  at  the  British  Association,  and  have  given 
two  lectures  at  the  Royal  Institution — one  of  them  only  two  days 
ago,  when  I  was  so  ill  with  influenza  I  could  hardly  stand  or 
speak. 

Furthermore,  I  have  been  a  candidate  for  a  Professorship  of 
Natural  History  at  Toronto  (which  is  not  even  yet  decided) ; 
for  one  at  Aberdeen,  which  has  been  given  against  me ;  and  at 
present  I  am  a  candidate  for  the  Professorship  of  Physiology 
at  King's  College,  or,  rather,  for  half  of  it — Todd  having  given 
up,  and  Bowman,  who  remains,  being  willing  to  take  only  half, 
and  that  he  will  soon  give  up.  My  friend  Edward  Forbes — a 
regular  brick,  who  has  backed  me  through  thick  and  thin — 
is  backing  me  for  King's  College,  where  he  is  one  of  the  Pro- 
fessors. My  chance  is,  I  believe,  very  good,  but  nothing  can  be 
more  uncertain  than  the  result  of  the  contest.  If  they  don't 
take  one  of  their  own  men  I  think  they  will  have  me.  It  would 
suit  me  very  well,  and  the  whole  chair  is  worth  £400  a  year,  and 
would  enable  me.  to  live. 

Something  I  must  make  up  my  mind  to  do,  and  that  speedily. 
I  can  get  honour  in  Science,  but  it  doesn't  pay,  and  "  honour 
heals  no  wounds."  In  truth  I  am  often  very  weary.  The 
longer  one  lives  the  more  the  ideal  and  the  purpose  vanishes 
put  of  one's  life,  and  I  begin  to  doubt  whether  I  have  done 
wisely  in  giving  vent  to  the  cherished  tendency  towards  Science 
which  has  haunted  me  ever  since  my  childhood.  Had  I  given 
myself  to  Mammon  I  might  have  been  a  respectable  member  of 
society  with  large  watch-seals  by  this  time.  I  think  it  is  very 
likely  that  if  this  King's  College  business  goes  against  me,  I 
may  give  up  the  farce  altogether — ^bum  my  books,  bum  my 
rod,  and  take  to  practice  in  Australia.  It  is  no  use  to  go  on 
kicking  against  the  pricks.  .  .  . 


CHAPTER   VIII 

1854 

The  year  1854  marks  the  turning-point  in  Huxley's 
career.  The  desperate  time  of  waiting  came  to  an  end.  By 
the  help  of  his  lectures  and  his  pen,  he  could  at  all  events 
stand  and  wait  independently  of  the  Navy.  He  could  not, 
of  course,  think  of  immediate  marriage,  nor  of  asking  Miss 
Heathom  to  join  him  in  England ;  but  it  so  happened  that 
her  father  was  already  thinking  of  returning  home,  and 
finally  this  was  determined  upon  just  before '  Professor 
Forbes'  translation  to  a  chair  at  Edinburgh  gave  Huxley 
what  turned  out  to  be  the  long-hoped-for  permanency  in 
London. 

June  3.  1854. 

I  have  often  spoken  to  you  of  my  friend  Edward  Forbes. 
He  has  quite  recently  been  suddenly  appointed  to  a  Professorial 
Chair  in  Edinburgh,  vacated  by  the  death  of  old  Jamieson.  He 
was  obliged  to  go  down  there  at  once  and  lecture,  and  as  he 
had  just  commenced  his  course  at  the  Government  School  of 
Mines  in  Jerrayn  Street,  it  was  necessary  to  obtain  a  substitute. 
He  had  spoken  to  me  of  the  possibility  of  his  being  called  away 
long  ago,  and  had  asked  if  I  would  take  his  place,  to  which, 
of  course,  I  assented,  but  the  whole  affair  was  so  uncertain 
that  I  never  in  any  way  reckoned  upon  it.  Even  at  last  I  did 
not  know  on  the  Monday  whether  I  was  to  go  on  for  him  on 
the  Friday  or  not.  However,  he  did  go  after  giving  two  lee-, 
hires,  and  on  Friday  the  2Sth  May  I  took  his  lecture,  and  I 
have  been  going  on  ever  since,  twice  a  week  on  Mondays  and 
Fridays.  Called  upon  so  very  suddenly  to  give  a  course  of  some 
six  and  twenty  lectures,  I  find  it  very  hard  work,  but  I  like  it 
and  I  never  was  in  better  health. 

"7 


Il8  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  viii 

On  July  20,  this  temporary  work,  which  he  had  under- 
taken as  the  friend  of  Forbes,  was  exchanged  for  one  of  the 
permanent  lectureships  formerly  held  by  the  latter.  A  hun- 
dred a  year  for  twenty-six  lectures  was  not  affluence;  it 
would  have  suited  him  better  to  have  had  twice  the  work 
and  twice  the  pay.  But  it  was  his  crossing  of  the  Rubicon, 
and,  strangely  enough,  no  sooner  had  he  gained  this  success 
than  it  was  doubled. 

July  30.  1854. 

I  was  appointed  yesterday  to  a  post  of  £200  a  year.  It  has 
all  come  about  in  the  strangest  way.  I  told  you  how  my  friend 
Forbes  had  been  suddenly  called  away  to  Edinburgh,  and  that 
I  had  suddenly  taken  his  duties — sharp  work  it  has  been  I  can 
tell  you  these  summer  months,  but  it  is  over  and  done  satisfac- 
torily. Forbes  got  £500  a  year,  £200  for  a  double  lectureship, 
£300  for  another  office.  I  took  one  of  the  lectureships,  which 
would  have  given  me  £100  a  year  only,  and  another  man  was  to 
have  the  second  lectureship  and  the  other  office  in  question.  It 
was  so  completely  settled  a  week  ago  that  I  had  written  to  the 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade  who  makes  the  appointment,  ac- 
cepting mine,  and  the  other  man  had  done  the  same.  Happily  for 
me,  however,  my  new  colleague  was  suddenly  afflicted  with  a 
sort  of  moral  colic,  an  absurd  idea  that  he  could  not  perform 
the  duties  of  his  office,  and  resigned  it  The  result  is  that  a 
new  man  has  been  appointed  to  the  office  he  left  vacant,  while 
the  lectureship  was  offered  to  me.  Of  course  I  took  it,  and  so 
in  the  course  of  the  week  I  have  seen  my  paid  income  doubled. 
...  So  after  a  short  interval  I  have  become  a  Government 
officer  again,  but  in  rather  a  different  position  I  flatter  my- 
self. I  am  chief  of  my  own  department,  and  my  position  is  con- 
sidered a  very  good  one — ^as  good  as  anything  of  its  kind  in 
London. 

Furthermore,  on  August  1 1  he  was  "  entrusted  with 
the  Coast  Survey  investigations  under  the  Geological  Sur- 
vey, and  remunerated  by  fee  until  March  31,  1855,  when  he 
was  ranked  as  Naturalist  on  the  Survey  with  an  additional 
salary  of  £200,  afterwards  increased  to  £400,  rising  to  £600 
per  annum,"  as  the  official  statement  has  it. 

Then  in  quick  succession  he  was  offered  in  August  a 
lectureship  on  Comparative  Anatomy  at  St.  Thomas'  Hos- 
pital for  the  following  May  and  June,  and  in  September  he 


i854  HIS   FRANKNESS  ng 

was  asked  to  lecture  in  November  and  March  for  the  Sci- 
ence and  Art  Department  at  Marlborough  House. 

Now  therefore,  with  the  Heathoms  coming  to  England, 
his  plans  and  theirs  exactly  fitted,  and  he  proposed  to  get 
married  as  soon  as  they  came  over,  early  in  the  following 
summer. 

A  letter  of  this  year  deserves  quoting  as  illustrating  the 
directness  of  Huxley's  dealings  with  his  friends,  and  his 
hatred  of  doing  anything  unknown  to  them  which  might 
be  misreported  to  them  or  misconstrued  without  explana- 
tion. As  a  member  of  the  Royal  Society  Council,  it  was  his 
duty  to  vote  upon  the  persons  to  whom  the  yearly  medals 
of  the  Society  should  be  awarded.  For  the  Royal  Medal 
first  Hooker  was  named,  and  received  his  hearty  support; 
then  Forbes,  in  opposition  to  Hooker,  in  his  eyes  equally 
deserving  of  recognition,  and  almost  more  closely  bound 
to  him  by  ties  of  friendship,  so  that  whatever  action  he  took, 
might  be  ascribed  to  motives  which  should  have  no  part 
in  such  a  selection.  The  course  actually  taken  by  him  he 
explained  at  length  in  letters  to  both  Forbes  and  Hooker. 

A'ov.  6,  1854. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  have  been  so  busy  with  lecturing  here 
and  there  that  I  have  not  had  time  to  write  and  congratulate  you 
on  the  award  of  the  medal.  The  queer  position  in  which  I  was 
placed  prevents  me  from  being  able  to  congratulate  myself  on 
having  any  finger  in  the  pie,  but  I  am  quite  sure  there  was  no 
member  of  the  Council  who  felt  more  strongly  than  myself  that 
what  honour  the  bauble  could  confer  was  most  fully  won,  and  no 
more  than  your  just  deserts;  or  who  rejoiced  more  when  the 
thing  was  settled  in  your  favour. 

However,  I  do  trust  that  I  shall  never  be  placed  in  such  an 
awkward  position  again.  I  would  have  given  a  great  deal  to  be 
able  to  back  Forbes  tooth  and  nail — not  only  on  account  of  my 
personal  friendship  and  affection  for  him,  but  because  I  think  he 
well  deserves  such  recognition.  And  had  I  thought  right  to  do 
so,  I  felt  sure  that  you  would  have  fully  appreciated  my  motives, 
and  that  it  would  have  done  no  injury  to  our  friendship. 

But  as  I  told  the  Council  I  did  not  think  this  a  case  where 
either  of  you  had  any  right  to  be  excluded  by  the  other.  I  told 
them  that  had  Forbes  been  first  named,  I  should  have  thought  it 

9 


I20  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  viii 

injudicious  to  bring  you  forward,  and  that,  as  you  were  named, 
I  for  my  own  part  should  not  have  brought  forward  Forbes  as 
a  candidate;  that  therefore  while  willing  to  speak  up  to  any 
extent  for  Forbes'  positive  merits  and  deserts,  I  would  carefully 
be  understood  to  give  no  opinion  as  to  your  and  his  relative 
standing. 

They  did  not  take  much  by  my  speech  therefore  either  way, 
more  especially  as  I  voted  for  both  of  you. 

I  hate  doing  anything  of  the  kind  "  unbeknownst "  to  people, 
so  there  is  the  exact  history  of  my  proceedings.  If  I  had  been 
able  to  come  to  the  clear  conclusion  that  the  claims  of  either 
of  you  were  strongly  superior  to  those  of  the  other,  I  think  I 
should  have  had  the  honesty  and  moral  courage  to  "  act  ac- 
cordin*,"  but  I  really  had  not,  and  so  there  was  no  part  to  play 
but  that  of  a  sort  of  Vicar  of  Bray. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Forbes'  reply  was  a  letter  which  Huxley,  after  his  friend's 
death,  held  "  among  his  most  precious  possessions."  It 
appeared  without  names  in  the  obituary  notice  of  Forbes  in 
the  Literary  Gazette  for  November  25,  1854,  as  an  example 
of  his  unselfish  generosity : — 

I  heartily  concur  in  the  course  you  have  taken,  and  had  I 
been  placed  as  you  have  been,  would  have  done  exactly  the 
same.  .  .  .  Your  way  of  proceeding  was  as  true  an  act  of  friend- 
ship as  any  that  could  be  performed.  As  to  myself,  I  dream  so 
little  about  medals,  that  the  notion  of  being  on  the  list  never 
entered  my  brain,  even  when  asleep.  If  it  ever  comes  I  shall 
be  pleased  and  thankful ;  if  it  does  not,  it  is  not  the  sort  of  thing 
to  break  my  equanimity.  Indeed,  I  would  always  like  to  see  it 
g^ven  not  as  a  mere  honour,  but  as  a  help  to  a  good  man,  and 
this  it  is  assuredly  in  Hooker's  case.  Government  people  are 
so  ignorant  that  they  require  to  have  merits  drummed  into  their 
heads  by  all  possible  means,  and  Hooker's  getting  the  medal 
may  be  of  real  service  to  him  before  long.  I  am  in  a  snug, 
though  not  an  idle,  nest, — ^he  has  not  got  his  resting-place  yet. 
And  so,  my  dear  Huxley,  I  trust  that  you  know  me  too  well  to 
think  that  I  am  either  grieved  or  envious,  and  you.  Hooker, 
and  I  are  much  of  the  same  way  of  thinking. 

It  is  interesting  to  record  the  same  scrupulosity  over 
the  election  to  the  Registrarship  of  the  University  of  Lon- 
don in  1856,  when,  having  begun  to  canvass  for  Dr.  Latham 


i853  HIS  FRANKNESS  12 1 

before  his  friend  Dr.  W.  B.  Carpenter  entered  the  field,  he 
writes  to  Hooker : — 

I  at  once,  of  course,  told  Carpenter  precisely  what  I  had 
done.  Had  I  known  of  his  candidature  earlier,  I  should  cer- 
tainly have  taken  no  active  part  on  either  side — not  for  Latham, 
because  I  would  not  oppose  Carpenter,  and  not  for  Carpenter, 
because  his  getting  the  Registrarship  would  probably  be  an  ad- 
vantage for  me,  as  I  should  have  a  good  chance  of  obtaining  the 
Examinership  in  Physiology  and  Comparative  Anatomy  which 
he  would  vacate.  Indeed,  I  refused  to  act  for  Carpenter  in  a 
case  in  which  he  asked  me  to  do  so,  partly  for  this  reason  and 
partly  because  I  felt  thoroughly  committed  to  Latham.  Under 
these  circumstances  I  think  you  are  quite  absolved  from  any 
pledge  to  me.  It's  deuced  hard  to  keep  straight  in  this  wicked 
world,  but  as  you  say  the  only  chance  is  to  out  with  it,  and  I 
thank  you  much  for  writing  so  frankly  about  the  matter.  I  hope 
it  will  be  as  fine  as  to-day  at  Down.* 

Unfortunately  the  method  was  not  so  successful  with 
smaller  minds.  Once  in  1852,  when  he  had  to  report  un- 
favourably on  a  paper  for  the  Annals  of  Natural  History  on 
the  structure  of  the  Starfishes,  sent  in  by  an  acquaintance, 
he  felt  it  right  not  to  conceal  his  action,  as  he  might  have 
done,  behind  the  referee's  usual  screen  of  anonymity,  but  to 
write  a  frank  account  of  the  reasons  which  had  led  him  so 
to  report,  that  he  might  both  clear  himself  of  the  suspicion 
of  having  dealt  an  unfair  blow  in  the  dark,  and  give  his  ac- 
quaintance the  opportunity  of  correcting  and  enlarging  his 
paper  with  a  view  of  submitting  it  again  for  publication. 

In  this  case  the  only  result  was  an  irhpassioned  corre- 
spondence, the  author  even  going  so  far  as  to  suggest  that 
Huxley  had  condemned  the  paper  without  having  so  much 
as  dissected  an  Echinoderm  in  his  life !  and  then  all  inter- 
course ceased,  till  years  afterwards  the  gentleman  in  ques- 
tion realised  the  weaknesses  of  his  paper  and  repented  him 
of  his  wrath. 

Before  leaving  London  to  begin  his  work  at  Tenby  as 
Naturalist  to  the  Survey,  he  delivered  at  St.  Martin's  Hall, 
on  July  22,  an  address  on  the  "  Educational  Value  of  the 

*  Charles  Darwin's  home  in  Kent. 


122  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  viii 

Natural  History  Sciences.*  This,  when  it  came  out  later  as 
a  pamphlet,  he  sent  to  his  Tenby  friend  Dr.  Dyster  (of 
whom  hereafter),  to  whose  criticism  on  one  passage  he  re- 
plied on  October  lo: — 

.  .  .  — I  am  rejoiced  you  liked  my  speechment.  It  was 
written  hastily  and  is,  like  its  speaker,  I  fear,  more  forcible 
than  eloquent,  but  it  can  lay  claim  to  the  merit  of  being  sin- 
cere. 

My  intention  on  p.  28  was  by  no  means  to  express  any  satis- 
faction at  the  worms  being  as  badly  off  as  ourselves,  but  to  show 
that  pain  being  everywhere  is  inevitable,  and  therefore  like  all 
other  inevitable  things  to  be  borne.  The  rest  of  it  is  the  product 
of  my  scientific  Calvinism,  which  fell  like  a  shell  at  your  feet 
when  we  were  talking  over  the  fire. 

I  doubt,  or  at  least  I  have  no  confidence  in,  the  doctrine  of 
ultimate  happiness,  and  I  am  more  inclined  to  look  the  opposite 
possibility  fully  in  the  face,  and  if  that  also  be  inevitable,  make 
up  my  mind  to  bear  it  also. 

You  will  tell  me  there  are  better  consolations  than  Stoicism ; 
that  may  be,  but  I  do  not  possess  them,  and  I  have  found  my 
"  grin  and  bear  it "  philosophy  stand  me  in  such  good  stead  in 
my  course  through  oceans  of  disgust  and  chagrin,  that  I  should 
be  loth  to  give  it  up. 

The  summer  of  1854  was  spent  in  company  with  the 
Busks  at  Tenby,  amid  plenty  of  open-air  work  and  in  great 
peace  of  mind,  varied  with  a  short  visit  to  Liverpool  in  order 
to  talk  business  with  his  friend  Forbes,  who  was  eager  that 
Huxley  should  join  him  in  Edinburgh. 

*  The  subsequent  reference  is  to  the  words,  **  I  cannot  but  think 
that  he  who  finds  a  certain  proportion  of  pain  and  evil  inseparably 
woven  up  in  the  life  of  the  very  worms  will  bear  his  own  share  with 
more  courage  and  submission  ;  and  will,  at  any  rate,  view  with  sus- 
picion those  weakly  amiable  theories  of  the  divine  government,  which 
would  have  us  believe  pain  to  be  an  oversight  and  a  mistake,  to  be 
corrected  by  and  by.**  (Collected  Essays,  iii.  p.  62.)  This  essay  contains 
the  definition  of  science  as  **  trained  and  organised  common  sense,** 
and  the  reference  to  a  new  "Peter  Bell'*  which  suggested  Miss  May 
Kendall's  spirited  parody  of  Wordsworth  :— 

Primroses  by  the  river's  brim 
Dicotyledons  were  to  him, 
And  they  were  nothing  more. 


i854  SURVEY  WORK  AT   TENBY  123 

Tenbv,  South  Wales,  Sept  3,  1854. 

I  have  been  here  since  the  middle  of  August,  getting  rid  of 
my  yellow  face  and  putting  on  a  brown  one,  banishing  dys- 
pepsias and  hypochondrias  and  all  such  other  town  afflictions  to 
the  four  winds,  and  rejoicing  exceedingly  that  I  am  out  of  the 
way  of  that  pest,  the  cholera,  which  is  raging  just  at  present 
in  London. 

After  I  had  arranged  to  come  here  to  do  a  lot  of  work  of  my 
own  which  can  only  be  done  by  the  seaside,  our  Director,  Sir 
Henry  de  la  Beche,  gave  me  a  special  mission  of  his  own 
whereby  I  have  the  comfort  of  having  my  expenses  paid,  but 
at  the  same  time  get  it  taken  out  of  me  in  additional  labour,  so 
my  recreation  is  anything  but  leisure. 

Oct.  14. 

I  left  this  place  for  a  week's  trip  to  Liverpool  in  the  end 
of  September.  The  meeting  of  tJie  British  Association  was  held 
there,  but  I  went  not  so  much  to  be  present  as  to  meet  Forbes, 
with  whom  I  wanted  to  talk  over  many  matters  concerning  us 
both.  Forbes  had  a  proposition  that  I  should  go  to  Edinburgh 
to  take  part  of  the  duties  of  the  Professor  of  Physiology  there, 
who  is  in  bad  health,  with  the  ultimate  aim  of  succeeding  to  the 
chair.  It  was  a  tempting  offer  made  in  a  flattering  manner, 
and  presenting  a  prospect  of  considerably  better  emolument 
than  my  special  post,  but  it  had  the  disadvantage  of  being  but 
an  uncertain  position.  Had  I  accepted,  I  should  have  been  at 
the  mercy  of  the  actual  Professor — ^and  that  is  a  position  I  don't 
like  standing  in,  even  with  the  best  of  men,  and  had  he  died 
or  resigned  at  any  time  the  Scotch  chairs  are  so  disposed  of 
that  there  would  have  been  nothing  like  a  certainty  of  my  get- 
ting the  post,  so  I  definitely  declined — I  hope  wisely. 

After  some  talk,  Forbes  agreed  with  my  view  of  the  case,  so 
he  is  off  to  Edinburgh,  and  I  shall  go  off  to  London.  I  hope 
to  remain  there  for  my  life  long. 

He  had  long  felt  that  London  gave  the  best  oppor- 
tunities for  a  scientific  career,  and  it  was  on  his  advice  that 
Tyndall  had  left  Queenwood  College  for  the  Royal  Institu- 
tion, where  he  was  elected  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy 
in  1853:— 

6  Upper  York  Place,  St.  John's  Wood, 
Feb.  25.  1853. 
My  dear  Tyndall — Having  rushed  into  more  responsibility 
than  I  wotted  of,  I  have  been  ruminating  and  taking  counsel 


124  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  viii 

what  advice  to  give  you.  When  I  wrote  I  hardly  knew  what 
kind  of  work  you  had  in  your  present  office,  but  Francis  has 
since  enlightened  me.  I  thought  you  had  more  leisure.  One 
thing  is  very  clear — ^you  must  come  out  of  that.  Your  Pegasus 
is  quite  out  of  place  ploughing.  You  are  using  yourself  up  in 
work  that  comes  to  nothing,  and  so  far  as  I  can  see  cannot  be 
worse  oflF. 

Now  what  are  your  prospects  ?  Why,  as  I  told  you  before, 
you  have  made  a  succks  here  and  must  profit  by  it.  The  other 
night  your  name  was  mention^  at  the  Philosophical  Club  (the 
most  influential  scientific  body  in  London)  with  great  praise. 
Gassiot,  who  has  great  influence,  said  in  so  many  words,  "  you 
had  made  your  fortune,"  and  I  frankly  tell  you  I  believe  so  too, 
if  you  can  only  get  over  the  next  three  years.  So  you  see  that 
quoad  position,  like  Quintus  Curtius,  there  is  a  "  fine  opening  ** 
ready  for  you,  only  mind  you  don't  spoil  it  by  any  of  your  horrid 
modesty. 

So  much  for  glory — ^now  for  economics.  I  have  been  try- 
ing to  ferret  out  more  nearly  your  chances  of  a  post,  and  here 
are  my  restdts  (which,  I  need  not  tell  you,  must  be  kept  to 
yourself). 

At  the  Museum  in  Jermyn  Street,  Play  fair,  Forbes,  Percy 
and  I  think  Sir  Henry  would  do  anything  to  get  you,  and  elimi- 
nate   ;  but,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  the  probability  of  his 

going  is  so  small  that  it  is  not  worth  your  while  to  reckon  upon 
it.  Nevertheless  it  may  be  comforting  to  you  to  know  that  in 
case  of  anything  happening  these  men  will  help  you  tooth  and 
nail.  Cultivate  Playfair  when  you  have  a  chance — ^he  is  a  good 
fellow,  wishes  you  well,  has  great  influence,  and  will  have  more. 
Entre  nous,  he  has  just  got  a  new  and  important  post  under 
Government. 

Next,  the  Royal  Institution.  This  is  where,  as  I  told  you, 
you  ought  to  be — looking  to  Faraday's  place.  Have  no  scruple 
about  your  chemical  knowledge ;  you  won't  be  required  to  train  a 
college  of  students  in  abstruse  analyses;  and  if  you  were,  a 
year's  work  would  be  quite  enough  to  put  you  at  ease.  What 
they  want,  and  what  you  have,  are  clear  powers  of  exposition 
— so  clear  that  people  may  think  they  understand  even  if  they 
don't.  That  is  the  secret  of  Faraday's  success,  for  not  a  tithe 
of  the  people  who  go  to  hear  him  really  understand  him. 

However,  I  am  afraid  that  a  delay  must  occur  before  you 
can  get  placed  at  the  Royal  Institution,  as  you  cannot  hold  the 
Professorship  until  you  have  given  a  course  of  lectures  there. 


1853  ADVICE   TO   TYNDALL  125 

and  it  would  seem  that  there  is  no  room  for  you  this  year.  How- 
ever, I  must  try  and  learn  more  about  this. 

Under  these  circumstances  the  London  Institution  looks 
tempting.  I  have  been  talking  over  the  matter  with  Forbes, 
whose  advice  I  look  upon  as  first-rate  in  all  these  things,  and 
he  is  decidedly  of  the  opinion  that  you  should  take  the  London 
Institution  if  it  is  offered  you.  He  says  that  lecturing  there 
and  lecturing  at  other  Institutions,  and  writing,  you  could  with 
certainty  make  more  than  you  at  present  receive,  and  that  you 
would  have  the  command  of  a  capital  laboratory  and  plenty  of 
time. 

Then  as  to  position — of  which  I  was  doubtful — it  appears 
that  Grove  has  made  it  a  good  one. 

It  is  of  great  importance  to  look  to  this  point  in  London — to 
be  unshackled  by  anything  that  may  prevent  you  taking  the 
highest  places,  and  it  was  only  my  fear  on  this  head  that  made 
me  advise  you  to  hesitate  about  the  London  Institution.  More 
consideration  leads  me  to  say,  take  that,  if  it  will  bring  you  up 
to  London  at  once,  so  that  you  may  hammer  your  reputation 
while  it  is  hot. 

However,  consider  all  these  things  well,  and  don't  be  hasty. 
I  will  keep  eyes  and  ears  open  and  inform  you  accordingly. 
Write  to  me  if  there  is  anything  you  want  done,  supposing 
always  there  is  nobody  who  will  do  it  better — ^which  is  im- 
probable.— Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

But  this  year  of  victory  was  not  to  pass  away  without 
one  last  blow  from  fate.  On  November  18,  Edward  Forbes, 
the  man  in  whom  Huxley  had  found  a  true  friend  and 
helper,  inspired  by  the  same  ideals  of  truth  and  sincerity 
as  himself,  died  suddenly  at  Edinburgh.  The  strong  but 
delicate  ties  that  united  them  were  based  not  merely  upon 
intellectual  affinity,  but  upon  the  deeper  moral  kinship  of 
two  strong  characters,  where  each  subordinated  interest  to 
ideal,  and  treated  others  by  the  measure  of  his  own  self- 
respect.    As  early  as  March  1851  he  had  written : — 

I  wish  you  knew  my  friend  Prof.  Forbes.  He  is  the  best 
creature  you  can  imagine,  and  helps  me  in  all  manner  of  ways. 
A  man  of  very  great  knowledge,  he  is  wholly  free  from  pedantry 
and  jealousy,  the  two  besetting  sins  of  literary  and  scientific 
men.  Up  to  his  eyes  in  work,  he  never  grudges  his  time  if  it 
is  to  help  a  friend.    He  is  one  of  the  few  men  I  have  ever  met 


126  UFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vm 

to  whom  I  can  feel  obliged,  without  losing  a  particle  of  inde- 
l>endence  or  self-respect. 

The  following  from  a  letter  to  Hooker,  announcing 
Forbes'  death,  is  a  striking  testimony  to  his  worth : — 

I  think  I  have  never  felt  so  crushed  by  anything  before. 
It  is  one  of  those  losses  which  cannot  be  replaced  either  to  the 
private  friend  or  to  science.-  To  me  especially  it  is  a  bitter  loss. 
Without  the  aid  and  sympathy  he  has  always  given  me  from 
first  to  last,  I  should  never  have  had  the  courage  to  persevere 
in  the  course  I  have  followed.  And  it  was  one  of  my  greatest 
hopes  that  we  should  work  in  harmony  for  long  years  at  the 
aims  so  dear  to  us  both. 

But  it  is  otherwise,  and  we  who  remain  have  nothing  left 
but  to  bear  the  inevitable  as  we  best  may. 

And  again  a  few  days  later: — 

I  have  had  no  time  to  write  to  you  again  till  now,  but  I  write 
to  say  how  perfectly  you  express  my  own  feeling  about  our  poor 
friend.  One  of  the  first  things  I  thought  of  was  that  medal 
business,*  and  I  never  rejoiced  in  anything  more  than  that  I 
had  not  been  deterred  by  any  moral  cowardice  from  acting  as 
I  did. 

As  it  is  I  reckon  that  letter  (which  I  will  show  you  some 
day)  among  my  most  precious  possessions. 

Huxley's  last  tribute  to  his  dead  friend  was  the  organ- 
ising a  memorial  fund,  part  of  which  went  to  getting  a  bust 
of  him  made,  part  to  establishing  an  Edward  Forbes  medal, 
to  be  competed  for  by  the  students  of  his  old  school  in 
Jermyn  Street. 

As  Huxley  had  been  Forbes'  successor  at  Jermyn  Street, 
so  now  he  seemed  to  many  marked  out  to  succeed  him  at 
Edinburgh.    In  November  he  writes  to  Hooker : — 

People  have  been  at  me  about  the  Edinburgh  chair.  If  I 
could  contrive  to  stop  here,  between  you  and  I,  I  would  prefer  it 
to  half  a  dozen  Edinburgh  chairs,  but  there  is  a  mortal  difference 
between  £200  and  £1000  a  year.  I  have  written  to  say  that  if 
the  Professors  can  make  up  their  minds  they  wish  me  to  stand,  I 
will — if  not,  I  will  not.    For  my  own  part,  I  believe  my  chances 

♦  P.  119. 


i854  AN   EVENTFUL  YEAR  127 

would  be  very  small,  and  I  think  there  is  every  probability  of 
their  dividing  the  chair,  in  which  case  I  certainly  would  not  go. 
However,  I  hate  thinking  about  the  thing. 

And  also  to  his  sister : — 

Nov,  26,  1854. 

My  dearest  Lizzie — I  feel  I  have  been  silent  very  long — a 
great  deal  too  long — ^but  you  would  understand  if  you  knew  how 
much  I  have  to  do ;  why,  with  every  disposition  to  do  otherwise, 
I  now  write  hardly  any  but  business  letters.  Even  Nettie  comes 
off  badly  I  am  afraid.  When  a  man  embarks  as  I  have  done, 
with  nothing  but  his  brains  to  back  him,  on  the  great  sea  of  life 
in  London,  with  the  determination  to  make  the  influence  and  the 
position  and  the  money  which  he  hasn't  got,  you  may  depend 
upon  it  that  the  fierce  wants  and  interests  of  his  present  and 
immediate  circle  leave  him  little  time  to  think  of  anything  else, 
whatever  old  loves  and  old  memories  may  be  smouldering  as 
warmly  as  ever  below  the  surface.  So,  sister  mine,  you  must 
not  imagine  because  I  do  not  write  that  therefore  I  do  not  think 
of  you  or  care  to  know  about  you,  but  only  that  I  am  eaten  up 
with  the  zeal  of  my  own  house,  and  doing  with  all  my  heart  the 
thing  that  the  moment  calls  for. 

The  last  year  has  been  eventful  for  me.  There  is  always 
a  Cape  Horn  in  one's  life  that  one  either  weathers  or  wrecks 
one's  self  on.  Thank  God  I  think  I  may  say  I  have  weathered 
mine — ^not  without  a  good  deal  of  damage  to  spars  and  rigging 
though,  for  it  blew  deuced  hard  on  the  other  side. 

At  the  commencement  of  this  year  my  affairs  came  to  a 
crisis.  The  Government,  notwithstanding  all  the  representa- 
tions which  were  made  to  them,  would  neither  give  nor  refuse 
the  grant  for  the  publication  of  my  work,  and  by  way  of  cutting 
short  all  further  discussion  the  Admiralty  called  upon  me  to 
serve.  A  correspondence  ensued,  in  which,  as  commonly  hap- 
pens in  these  cases,  they  got  the  worst  of  it  in  logic  and  words, 
and  I  in  reality  and  "tin."  They  answered  my  syllogism  by 
the  irrelevant  and  absurd  threat  of  stopping  my  pay  if  I  did  not 
serve  at  once.  Here  was  a  pretty  business !  However,  it  was 
no  use  turning  back  when  so  much  had  been  sacrificed  for  one's 
end,  so  I  put  their  Lordships'  letter  up  on  my  mantelpiece  and 
betook  myself  to  scribbling  for  my  bread.  They,  on  the  other 
hand,  removed  my  name  from  the  List.  So  there  was  an  inter- 
regnum when  I  was  no  longer  in  Her  Majesty's  service.  I  had 
already  joined  the  Westminster  Review,  and  had  inured  myself 


128  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  vm 

to  the  labour  of  translation — and  I  could  get  any  amount  of 
scientific  work  I  wanted  —  so  there  was  a  living,  though  a 
scanty  one,  and  amazingly  hard  work  for  it.  My  pen  is  not 
a  very  facile  one,  and  what  I  write  costs  me  a  good  deal  of 
trouble. 

In  the  spring  of  this  year,  however,  a  door  opened.  My 
poor  lost  friend  Professor  Forbes — ^whose  steady  attachment  and 
aid  had  always  been  of  the  utmost  service  to  me — ^was  called 
to  fill  the  chair  of  Natural  History  in  Edinburgh  at  a  moment's 
notice.  It  is  a  very  valuable  appointment,  and  he  was  obliged 
to  fill  it  at  once.  Of  course  he  left  a  number  of  vacancies  be- 
hind, among  them  one  at  the  Government  School  of  Mines  in 
Jermyn  Street,  where  he  lectured  on  Natural  History.  I  was 
called  upon  to  take  up  his  lectures  where  he  left  off,  in  the  same 
sudden  way,  and  the  upshot  of  it  all  was  that  I  became  perma- 
nently attached — with  £200  a  year  pay.  In  other  ways  I  can 
make  a  couple  of  hundred  a  year  more  even  now,  and  I  hope 
by-and-by  to  do  better.  In  fact,  a  married  man,  as  I  hope  soon 
to  be,  cannot  live  at  all  in  the  position  which  I  ought  to  occupy 
under  less  than  six  hundred  a  year.  If  I  keep  my  health,  how- 
ever, I  have  every  hope  of  being  able  to  do  this — but,  as  the 
jockeys  say,  the  pace  is  severe.  Nettie  is  coming  over  in  the 
spring,  and  if  I  have  any  luck  at  all,  I  mean  to  have  paid  off 
my  debts  and  to  be  married  by  this  time  next  year.* 

In  the  meanwhile,  strangely  enough — and  very  painfully  for 
me — ^new  possibilities  have  sprung  up.  My  poor  friend  Forbes 
died  only  a  week  ago,  just  as  he  was  beginning  his  course  and 
entering  upon  as  brilliant  a  career  as  ever  was  opened  to  any 
scientific  man  in  this  country. 

I  cannot  tell  you  how  deeply  this  has  shocked  me.  I  owe  him 
so  much,  I  loved  him  so  well,  and  I  have  so  very  very  few 
friends  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  that  it  has  been  perhaps 

*  He  writes  on  July  21,  1851 : — **  I  commenced  life  upon  nothing  at 
all,  and  I  had  to  borrow  in  the  ordinary  way  from  an  agent  for  the 
necessary  expenses  of  my  outfit.  I  sent  home  a  great  deal  of  money, 
but  notwithstanding,  from  the  beautiful  way  they  have  of  accumu- 
lating interest  and  charges  of  one  description  and  another,  I  found 
myself  jf  100  in  debt  when  I  returned — besides  something  to  my  broth- 
er, about  which,  however,  I  do  not  suppose  I  need  trouble  myself  just 
at  present.  As  you  may  imagine,  living  in  London,  my  pay  now 
hardly  keeps  me,  to  say  nothing  of  paying  off  my  old  scores.  I  could 
get  no  account  of  how  things  were  going  on  with  my  agent  while  I 
was  away,  and  therefore  I  never  could  tell  exactly  how  I  stood." 


i854  TENAX   PROPOSITI  129 

a  greater  loss  to  me  than  to  any  one — although  there  never  was 
a  man  so  widely  lamented.  One  could  trust  him  so  thoroughly ! 
However,  he  has  gone,  poor  fellow,  and  there  is  nothing  for  it 
but  to  shut  one's  self  up  again — and  I  was  only  going  to  say 
that  his  death  leaves  his  post  vacant,  and  I  have  been  strongly 
urged  to  become  a  candidate  for  it  by  several  of  the  most  influ-r 
ential  Edinburgh  Professors.  I  am  greatly  puzzled  what  to  do. 
I  do  not  want  to  leave  London,  nor  do  I  think  much  of  my  own 
chances  of  success  if  I  become  a  candidate — though  others  do. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  stipend  which  varies  between  £800  and 
£1200  a  year  is  not  to  be  pooh-poohed. 

We  shall  see.  If  I  can  carry  out  some  arrangements  which 
are  pending  with  the  Government  to  increase  my  pay  to  £400  a 
year,  I  shall  be  strongly  tempted  to  stop  in  London.  It  is  the 
place,  the  centre  of  the  world. 

In  the  meanwhile,  as  things  always  do  come  in  heaps,  I 
obtained  my  long-fought-for  Grant — ^though  indirectly — from 
the  Government,  which  is,  I  think,  a  great  triumph  and  vindi- 
cation of  the  family  motto — tenax  propositi.  Like  many  long- 
sought-for  blessings,  however,  it  is  rather  a  bore  now  I  have  it, 
as  I  don't  see  how  I  am  to  find  time  to  write  the  book.  But 
things  "  do  themselves  "  in  a  wonderful  way.  I'll  tell  you  how 
many  irons  I  have  in  the  fire  at  this  present  moment: — (i)  a 
manual-  of  Comparative  Anatomy  for  Churchill;  (2)  my 
•*  Grant"  book;  (3)  a  book  for  the  British  Museum  people 
(half  done)  ;  (4)  an  article  for  Todd's  Cyclopcsdia  (half  done)  ; 
(5)  sundry  memoirs  on  Science;  (6)  a  regular  Quarterly  arti- 
cle in  the  Westminster;  (7)  lectures  at  Jermyn  Street  in  the 
School  of  Mines;  (8)  lectures  at  the  School  of  Art,  Marlbor- 
ough House;  (9)  lectures  at  the  London  Institution,  and  odds 
and  ends.  Now,  my  dearest  Lizzie,  whenever  you  feel  inclined 
to  think  it  unkind  I  don't  write,  just  look  at  tiiat  list,  and  re- 
member that  all  these  things  require  strenuous  attention  and 
concentration  of  the  faculties,  and  leave  one  not  very  fit  for 
anything  else.  You  will  say  that  it  is  bad  to  be  so  entirely  ab- 
sorbed in  these  things,  and  to  that  I  heartily  say  Amen ! — ^but 
you  might  as  well  argue  with  a  man  who  has  just  mounted  the 
favourite  for  the  "  Oaks  "  that  it  is  a  bad  thing  to  ride  fast. 
He  admits  that,  and  is  off  like  a  shot  when  the  bell  rings  never- 
theless. My  bell  has  rung  some  time,  and  thank  God  the  win- 
ning-post is  in  sight. 

Give  my  kindest  regards  to  the  doctor  and  special  love  to  all 
the  children.    I  send  a  trifle  for  my  godson  and  some  odds  and 


I30 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  viii 


ends  in  the  book  line,  among  other  things  a  Shakespeare  for 
yourself,  dear  Liz. — Believe  me,  ever  your  afTec.  brother, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  December  the  Edinburgh  chair  was  practically  offered 
to  him  undivided ;  but  by  that  time  the  London  authorities 
thought  they  had  better  make  it  worth  his  while  to  stay  at 
Jermyn  Street,  and  with  negotiations  begun  for  this  end  he 
refused  to  stand  for  Edinburgh.  In  the  following  spring, 
however,  he  was  again  approached  from  Edinburgh — not  so 
much  to  withdraw  his  refusal  and  again  become  a  candidate, 
as  to  let  it  be  made  known  that  he  would  accept  the  chair 
if  it  were  offered  him.  But  his  position  in  London  was 
now  established;  and  he  preferred  to  live  in  London  on  a 
bare  sufficiency  rather  than  to  enjoy  a  larger  income  away 
from  the  centre  of  things. 

Two  letters  to  Tyndall,  which  refer  to  the  division  of 
labour  in  the  science  reviews  for  the  Westminster  (see  p. 
92),  indicate  very  clearly  the  high  pressure  at  which  Huxley 
had  already  begun  to  work : — 

Tenby,  South  Wales,  Oct.  22,  1854. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  was  rejoiced  to  find  you  entertaining 
my  proposition  at  all.  No  one  believes  how  hard  you  work  more 
than  I,  but  I  was  not  going  to  be  such  a  bad  diplomatist  as  to 
put  that  at  the  head  of-  my  letter,  and  if  I  had  thought  that 
what  I  want  you  to  do  involved  any  great  accession  thereto,  I 
think  I  could  nof  have  mustered  up  the  face  to  ask  you.  But 
really  and  truly,  so  long  as  it  is  confined  to  our  own  depart- 
ment it  is  no  great  affair.  You  make  me  laugh  at  the  long  face 
you  pull  about  the  duties,  based  on  my  phrase.  The  fact  is,  you 
notice  what  you  like,  and  what  you  do  not  you  leave  undone, 
unless  you  get  an  editorial  request  to  say  something  about  a 
particular  book.  The  whole  affair  is  entirely  in  your  own  hands 
— at  least  it  is  in  mine — as  I  went  upon  my  principle  of  having 
a  row  at  starting.  .  .  . 

Now  here  is  an  equitable  proposition.  Look  at  my  work.  I 
have  a  couple  of  monographs,  odds  and  ends  of  papers  for  jour- 
nals, a  manual  and  some  three  courses  of  lectures  to  provide 
for  this  winter.  "  My  necessities  are  as  great  as  thine,"  as  Sir 
Philip  Sidney  didn't  say,  so  be  a  brick,  split  the  difference,  and 


i854  INVITED  TO  SUCCEED  FORBES  131 

say  you  will  be  ready  for  the  April  number.  I  will  write  and 
announce  the  fact  to  Chapman. 

What  idiots  we  all  are  to  toil  and  slave  at  this  pace.  I 
almost  repent  me  of  tempting  you — after  all — ^so  I  promise  to 
hold  on  if  you  really  think  you  will  be  overdoing  it. 

With  you  I  envy  Francis  his  gastric  energies.  I  feel  I  have 
done  for  myself  in  that  line,  and  am  in  for  a  life-long  dyspeps. 
I  have  not,  now,  nervous  energy  enough  for  stomach  and  brain 
both,  and  if  I  work  the  latter,  not  even  the  fresh  breezes  of  this 
place  will  keep  the  former  in  order.  That  is  a  discovery  I  have 
made  here,  and  though  highly  instructive,  it  is  not  so  pleasant 
as  some  other  physiological  results  that  have  turned  up. 

Chapman,  who  died  of  cholera,  was  a  distant  relative  of  my 
man.  The  poor  fellow  vanished  in  the  middle  of  an  unfinished 
article,  which  has  appeared  in  the  last  Westminster,  as  his  for- 
lorn vale  I  to  the  world.  After  all,  that  is  the  way  to  die,  better 
a  thousand  times  than  drivelling  off  into  eternity  betwixt  awake 
and  asleep  in  a  fatuous  old  age. — Believe  me,  ever  yours  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

On  Tyndall  consenting,  he  wrote  again  on  the  29th : — 

I  rejoice  in  having  got  you  to  put  your  head  under  my  yoke, 
and  feel  ready  to  break  into  a  hand  gallop  on  the  strength  of  it. 

I  have  written  to  Chapman  to  tell  him  you  only  make  an 
experiment  on  your  cerebral  substance,  whose  continuance  de- 
pends on  tenacity  thereof. 

I  didn't  suspect  you  of  being  seduced  by  the  magnificence  of 
the  emolument,  you  Cincinnatus  of  the  laboratory.  I  only  sug- 
gested that  as  pay  sweetens  labour,  a  fortiori  it  will  sweeten 
what  to  you  will  be  no  labour. 

Tm  not  a  miserable  mortal  now — quite  the  contrary.  I  never 
am  when  I  have  too  much  to  do,  and  my  sage  reflection  was  not 
provoked  by  envy  of  the  more  idle.  Only  I  do  wish  I  could 
sometimes  ascertain  the  exact  juste  milieu  of  work  which  will 
suit,  not  my  head  or  will,  these  can't  have  too  much;  but  my 
absurd  stomach. 

The  Edinburgh  candidature,  the  adoption  of  his  wider 
scheme  for  the  carrying  out  of  the  coast  survey,  and  his 
approaching  marriage,  are  touched  upon  in  the  following 
letters  to  Dr.  Frederick  Dyster*  of  Tenby,  whose  keen 

*  It  was  to  Dyster  that  Huxley  owed  his  introduction  in  1854  to 
F.  D.  Maurice  (whose  work  in  educating  the  people  he  did  his  best  to 


132  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  viu 

interest  in  marine  zoology  was  the  starting-point  of  a  warm 
friendship  with  the  rising  naturalist,  some  fifteen  years  his 
junior.  He  was  strongly  urged  by  the  younger  man  to 
complete  and  systematise  his  observations  by  taking  in  turn 
all  the  species  of  each  genus  of  annelids  found  at  Tenby, 
and  working  them  up  into  a  series  of  little  monographs 
"  which  would  be  the  best  of  all  possible  foundations  for  a 
History  of  the  British  Annelidae  " : — 


To  Dr.  Dyster 

Jan,  5,  1855. 

[He  begins  by  confessing  "  a  considerable  liberty  "  he  had 
been  taking  with  Dyster's  name,  in  calling  a  joint  discovery  of 
this,  which  he  described  in  the  Edinburgh  New  Philosophical 
Journal,  Protula  Dysteri.] 

Are  you  very  savage?  If  so,  you  must  go  and  take  a  walk 
along  the  sands  and  see  the  slant  rays  of  the  sunset  tipping  the 
rollers  as  they  break  on  the  beach ;  that  always  made  even  me  at 
peace  with  all  the  world,  and  a  fortiori  it  will  you. 

Truly,  I  wish  I  had  any  such  source  of  consolation.  Chim- 
ney pots  are  highly  injurious  to  my  morals,  and  my  temper  is 
usually  in  proportion  to  the  extent  of  my  horizon. 

I  have  been  swallowing  oceans  of  disgust  lately.  All  sorts 
of  squabbles,  some  made  by  my  own  folly  and  others  by  the 
malice  of  other  people,  and  no  great  sea  and  sky  to  go  out  under, 
and  be  alone  and  forget  it  all. 

You  may  have  seen  my  name  advertised  by  Reeve  as  about 
to  write  a  memoir  of  poor  Forbes,  to  be  prefixed  to  a  collection 
of  his  essays.  I  found  that  to  be  a  mere  bookseller's  dodge  on 
Reeve's  part,  and  when  I  made  the  discovery,  of  course  we  had 
a  battle-royal,  and  I  have  now  wholly  withdrawn  from  it. 

I  find,  however,  that  one's  kind  and  generous  friends  imagine 
it  was  an  electioneering  manoeuvre  on  my  part  for  Edinburgh. 
Imagine  how  satisfactory.  I  forget  whether  I  told  you  that  I 
had  been  asked  to  stand  for  Edinburgh  and  have  done  so. 
Whether  I  shall  be  appointed  or  not  I  do  not  know.    So  far  as 

help),  and  later  to  Charles  Kingsley,  whom  he  first  met  at  the  end  of 
June  1855.  '*  What  Kingsley  do  you  refer  to?"  he  writes  on  May  6, 
**Aiton  Locke  Kingsley  or  Photographic  Kingsley?  I  shall  be  right 
glad  to  find  good  men  and  true  anywhere,  and  I  will  take  your  bail  for 
any  man.     But  the  work  must  be  critically  done." 


i855  EFFLORESCENT   PIETISM  133 

my  own  wishes  go,  I  am  in  a  curiously  balanced  state  of  mind 
about  it.  Many  things  make  it  a  desirable  post,  but  I  dread 
leaving  London  and  its  freedom — its  Bedouin  sort  of  life — for 
Edinburgh  and  no  whistling  on  Sundays.  Besides,  if  I  go  there, 
I  shall  have  to  give  up  all  my  coast-survey  plans,  and  all  their 
pleasant  concomitants. 

Apropos  of  Edinburgh  I  feel  much  like  the  Irish  hod-man 
who  betted  his  fellow  he  could  not  carry  him  up  to  the  top  of  a 
house  in  his  hod.  The  man  did  it,  but  Pat  turning  round  as  he 
was  set  down  on  the  roof,  said,  "  YeVe  done  it,  sure  enough, 
but,  bedad,  Td  great  hopes  ye*d  let  me  fall  about  three  rounds 
from  the  top."  Bedad,  Tm  nearly  at  the  top  of  the  Scotch  ladder, 
but  I've  hopes. 

It  is  finally  settled  that  the  chair  will  not  be  divided.  I  told 
them  frankly  I  would  not  go  if  it  were. 

Has  Highly  sent  your  books  yet? — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermvn  Street,  Ff6.  13,  1855. 

My  dear  Dyster —  ...  I  will  do  my  best  to  help to 

some  alumni  if  the  chance  comes  in  my  way,  though,  as  you  say, 
I  don't  like  him.  I  can't  help  it.  I  respect  piety,  and  hope  I 
have  some  after  my  own  fashion,  but  I  have  a  profound  preju- 
dice against  the  efflorescent  form  of  it.  I  never  yet  found 
in  people  thoroughly  imbued  with  that  pietism,  the  same  no- 
tions of  honour  and  straightforwardness  that  obtain  among 

men  of  the  world.    It  may  be  otherwise  with ,  but  I  can't 

help  my  pagan  prejudice.  So  don't  judge  harshly  of  me  there- 
anent. 

About  Edinburgh,  I  have  been  going  to  write  to  you  for 
days  past.  I  have  decided  on  withdrawing  from  the  can- 
didature, and  have  done  so.  In  fact  the  more  I  thought  of 
it  the  less  I  liked  it.  They  require  nine  months'  lectures  some 
four  or  five  times  a  week,  which  would  have  thoroughly 
used  me  up,  and  completely  put  a  stop  to  anything  like  original 
work;  and  then  there  was  a  horrid  museum  to  be  arranged, 
work  I  don't  care  about,  and  which  would  have  involved  an 
amount  of  intriguing  and  heart-burning,  and  would  have  re- 
quired an  amount  of  diplomacy  to  carry  to  a  successful  issue, 
for  which  my  temper  and  disposition  are  wholly  unfitted. 

And  then  I  felt  above  all  things  that  it  was  for  me  an  im- 
posture. Here  have  I  been  fighting  and  struggling  for  years, 
sacrificing  everything  to  be  a  man  of  science,  a  genuine  worker. 


134 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  viii 


and  if  I  had  obtained  the  Edinburgh  chair,  I  should  have  been 
in  reality  a  mere  pedagogue  and  a  man  of  science  only  in  name. 
Such  were  my  notions,  and  if  I  hesitated  at  all  and  allowed 
myself  to  become  a  candidate,  it  was  only  because  I  have  other 
interests  to  consult  than  my  own.  Intending  to  "  range  myself  " 
one  of  these  days  and  become  a  respectable  member  of  society, 
I  was  bound  to  consider  my  material  interests.  And  so  I  should 
have  been  still  a  candidate  for  Edinburgh  had  not  the  Govern- 
ment here  professed  themselves  unwilling  to  lose  my  services, 
adding  the  "  material  guarantee  "  of  an  addition  to  my  income, 
which,  though  by  no  means  bringing  it  up  to  the  point  of  Edin- 
burgh, will  still  enable  me  (das  heisst  "  us  ")  to  live  comfort- 
ably here. 

I  must  renounce  the  "pomps  and  vanities,"  but  all  those 
other  "  lusts  of  the  flesh  '*  which  may  beseem  a  gentleman  may 
be  reasonably  gratifled. 

Don't  you  think  I  have  been  wise  in  my  Hercules  choice? 
After  all  I  don't  lay  claim  to  any  great  merit,  seeing  it  was  any- 
thing but  certain  I  should  get  Edinburgh. 

The  best  of  all  is  that  I  have  every  reason  to  believe  that 
Government  will  carry  out  my  scheme  for  a  coast  survey,  so 
happily  and  pleasantly  beg^n  at  Tenby  last  year. 

The  final  arrangements  are  almost  complete,  and  I  believe 
you  may  make  up  your  mind  to  have  four  months  of  me  next 
year.  Tenby  shall  be  immortalised  and  Jenkyn  *  converted  into 
a  philosopher.  By  the  way,  I  think  the  best  way  would  be  to 
retain  the  shells  till  I  come.  My  main  purpose  is  to  have  in 
them  a  catalogue  of  what  Tenby  affords. 

Pray  give  my  kind  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Dyster,  and  be- 
lieve me,  ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

April  I,  1855. 

My  dear  Dyster — By  all  that's  good,  your  last  note,  which 
lies  before  me,  has  date  a  month  ago.  I  looked  at  it  just  now, 
and  became  an  April  fool  on  the  instant. 

All  the  winds  of  March,  however,  took  their  course  through 
my  thorax  and  eventuated  in  lectures.  At  least  that  is  all  the 
account  I  can  give  to  myself  of  the  time,  and  an  unprofitable 
account  it  is,  for  everything  but  one's  exchequer. 

So  far  as  knowledge  goes  it  is  mere  prodigality  spending 

*  Jenkyn  was  employed  to  collect  shells,  etc.,  at  Tenby.     He  is 
often  alluded  to  as  **  the  Professor." 


i855  THE  COAST   SURVEY  135 

one's  capital  and  adding  nothing,  for  I  find  the  physical  exertion 
of  lecturing  quite  unfits  me  for  much  else.  Fancy  how  last 
Friday  was  spent.  I  went  to  Jermyn  Street  in  the  morning  with 
the  intention  of  preparing  for  my  afternoon's  lecture.  People 
came  talking  to  me  up  to  within  a  quarter  of  an  hour  of  the 
time,  so  I  had  to  make  a  dash  without  preparation.  Then  I  had 
to  go  home  to  prepare  for  a  second  lecture  in  the  evening,  and 
after  that  I  went  to  a  soiree,  and  got  home  about  one  o'clock  in 
the  morning. 

I  go  on  telling  myself  this  won't  do,  but  to  no  purpose. 
You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  my  affairs  here  are  finally 
settled,  and  I  am  regularly  appointed  an  officer  of  the  survey 
with  the  commission  to  work  out  the  natural  history  of  the 
coast. 

Edinburgh  has  been  tempting  me  again,  and  in  fact  I  be- 
lieve I  was  within  an  ace  of  going  there,  but  the  Government 
definitely  offering  me  this  position,  I  was  too  glad  to  stop 
where  I  am. 

I  can  make  six  hundred  a  year  here,  and  that  being  the  case, 
I  conceive  I  have  a  right  to  consult  my  own  inclinations  and 
the  interests  of  my  scientific  reputation.  The  coast  survey  puts 
in  my  hands  the  finest  opportunities  that  ever  a  man  had,  and 
it  is  a  pity  if  I  do  not  make  myself  something  better  than  a 
Caledonian  pedagogue. 

The  great  first  scheme  I  have  in  connection  with  my  new 
post  is  to  work  out  the  Marine  Natural  History  of  Britain,  and 
to  have  every  species  of  sea  beast  properly  figured  and  described 
in  the  reports  which  I  mean  from  time  to  time  to  issue.  I  can 
get  all  the  engravings  and  all  the  printing  I  want  done,  but  of 
course  I  am  not  so  absurd  as  to  suppose  I  can  work  otit  all  these 
things  myself.  Therefore  my  notion  is  to  seek  in  all  highways 
and  byways  for  fellow  labourers.  Busk  will,  I  hope,  supply  me 
with  figures  and  descriptions  of  the  British  Polyzoa  and  Hy- 
drozoa,  and  I  have  confidence  in  my  friend,  Mr.  Dyster  of  Tenby 
(are  you  presumptuous  enough  to  say  you  know  him?)  for 
Uie  Annelids,  if  he  won't  object  to  that  mode  of  publishing  his 
work.  The  Mollusks,  the  Crustaceans,  and  the  Fishes,  the 
Echinoderms  and  the  Worms,  will  give  plenty  of  occupation  to 
the  other  people,  myself  included,  to  say  nothing  of  distribution 
and  of  the  recent  geological  changes,  all  of  which  come  within 
my  programme. 

Did  I  not  tell  you  it  was  a  fine  field,  and  could  the  land  o' 
cakes  give  me  any  scope  like  this? 


136  LIFE   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  viii 

April  9,  1855. 

My  dear  Dyster — I  didn't  by  any  means  mean  to  be  so 
sphinx-like  in  my  letter,  though  you  have  turned  out  an  CEdipus 
of  the  first  water.  True  it  is  that  I  mean  to  "  range  myself," 
"  live  cleanly  and  leave  off  sack,"  within  the  next  few  months 
— that  is  to  say,  if  nothing  happen  to  the  good  ship  which  is  at 
present  bearing  my  fiancee  homewards. 

So  far  as  a  restless  mortal — ^more  or  less  aweary  of  most 
things — ^like  myself  can  be  made  happy  by  any  other  human 
being,  I  believe  your  good  wishes  are  safe  of  realisation ;  at  any 
rate,  it  will  be  my  fault  if  they  are  not,  and  I  beg  you  never  to 
imagine  that  I  could  confound  the  piety  of  friendship  with  the 
"  efflorescent  '  variety. 

I  hope  to  marry  in  July,  and  make  my  way  down  to  Tenby 
shortly  afterwards,  and  I  am  ready  to  lay  you  a  wager  that  your 
vaticinations  touching  the  amount  of  work  that  won't  be  done 
don't  come  true. 

So  much  for  wives — now  for  worms — (I  could  not  for  the 
life  of  me  help  the  alliteration).  I,  as  right  reverend  father  in 
worms  and  Bishop  of  Annelids,  do  not  think  I  ought  to  inter- 
fere with  my  most  promising  son,  when  a  channel  opens  itself 
for  the  publication  of  his  labours.    So  do  what  you  will  apropos 

of  J .    If  he  does  not  do  the  worms  any  better  than  he  did 

the  zoophytes,  he  won't  interfere  with  my  plans. 

I  shall  be  glad  to  see  Mrs.  Buckland's  Echinoderm.  I  think 
it  must  be  a  novelty  by  what  you  say.  She  is  a  very  jolly 
person,  but  I  have  an  unutterable  fear  of  scientific  women. — 
Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

May  6,  1855. 

My  ship  is  not  come  home  but  is  coming,  and  I  have  been 
in  a  state  of  desperation  at  the  continuous  east  winds.  How- 
ever, to-day  there  is  a  westerly  gale,  and  if  it  lasts  I  shall 
have  news  soon.  You  may  imagine  that  I  am  in  an  unsat- 
isfactory state  of  mind  between  this  and  lecturing  five  times 
a  week. 

I  beg  to  say  that  the  "  goods  "  I  expect  are  home  produce 
transplanted  (or  sent  a  voyage  as  you  do  Madeira),  and  not 
foreign  growth  by  any  means.  But  it  is  five  years  since  we  met, 
I  am  another  man  altogether,  and  if  my  wife  be  as  much  altered, 
we  shall  need  a  new  introduction.  Correspondence,  however 
active,  is  a  poor  substitute  for  personal  communication  and  tells 
one  but  little  of  the  inner  life. 


1855  FULLERIAN   LECTURES  137 

Finally,  on  the  eve  of  his  marriage  in  July,  Tyndall  con- 
gratulates him  on  being  appointed  to  deliver  the  next  course 
of  FuUerian  Lectures  at  the  Royal  Institution : — 

The  fates  once  seemed  to  point  to  our  connection  in  a  distant 
land:  we  are  now  colleagues  at  home,  and  I  can  claim  you  as 
my  scientific  brother.  May  the  gods  continue  to  drop  fatness 
upon  you,  and  may  your  next  great  step  be  productive  of  all  the 
felicity  which  your  wannest  friends  or  your  own  rebellious  heart 
can  desire. 


CHAPTER   IX 

1855 

Miss  Heathorn  and  her  parents  reached  England  at 
the  beginning  of  May  1855,  and  took  up  their  abode  at  8 
Titchfield  Terrace,  not  far  from  Huxley's  own  lodgings  and 
his  brother's  house.  One  thing,  however,  filled  Huxley  with 
dismay.  Miss  Heathom's  health  had  broken  down  utterly, 
and  she  looked  at  death's  door.  All  through  the  preceding 
year  she  had  been  very  ill ;  she  had  gone  with  friends,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Wise,  to  the  newly  opened  mining-camp  at  Bath- 
urst,  and  she  and  Mrs.  Wise  were  indeed  the  first  women 
to  visit  it;  returning  to  Sydney  after  rather  a  rough  time, 
she  caught  a  chill,  and  being  wrongly  treated  by  a  doctor 
of  the  blood-letting,  calomel-dosing  school,  she  was  re- 
duced to  a  shadow,  and  only  saved  by  another  practitioner, 
who  reversed  the  treatment  just  in  time. 

In  his  letters  to  her,  Huxley  had  not  at  first  realised 
the  danger  she  had  been  in;  and  afterwards  tried  to  keep 
her  spirits  up  by  a  cheerful  optimism  that  would  only  look 
forward  to  their  joyful  union  and  many  years  of  unbroken 
happiness  to  atone  for  their  long  parting. 

But  the  reality  alarmed  him.  He  took  her  to  one  of 
the  most  famous  doctors  of  the  day,  as  if  merely  a  patient 
he  was  interested  in.  Then  as  one  member  of  the  profession 
to  another,  he  asked  him  privately  his  opinion  of  the  case. 
"  I  give  her  six  months  of  life,"  said  ^sculapius.  "  Well, 
six  months  or  not,"  replied  Huxley,  "  she  is  going  to  be  my 
wife."  The  doctor  was  mightily  put  out.  "  You  ought  to 
have  told  me  that  before."  Of  course,  the  evasive  answer 
in  such  a  contingency  was  precisely  what  Huxley  wished  to 
138 


i855  HIS   MARRIAGE  1 39 

avoid.  Happily  another  leading  doctor  held  a  much  more 
favourable  opinion,  and  said  that  with  care  her  strength 
would  come  back,  slowly  but  surely. 

14  Waverley  Place.  Wednesday, 
My  dear  HoOkei( — My  wife  and  I  met  again  on  Sunday  last, 
and  I  have  established  herself,  her  father  and  mother,  close  by 
me  here  at  8  Titchfield  Terrace,  Regent's  Park,  and  whenever 
you  and  Mrs.  Hooker  are  in  this  part  of  the  world,  and  can  find 
time  to  call  there,  you  will  find  her  anything  but  surprised  to 
see  you. 

God  help  me !  I  discover  that  I  am  as  bad  as  any  young  fool 
who  knows  no  better,  and  if  the  necessity  for  giving  six  lectures 
a  week  did  not  sternly  interfere,  I  should  be  hanging,  about  her 
ladyship's  apron-strings  all  day.  She  is  in  very  bad  health, 
poor  child,  and  I  have  some  reason  to  be  anxious,  but  I  have 
every  hope  she  will  mend  with  care. 

Oh  this  life !  "  atra  cura,"  as  old  Thackeray  has  it,  sits  on  all 
our  backs  and  mingles  with  all  our  happiness.  But  if  I  go  on 
talking  in  this  way  you  will  wonder  what  has  come  over  my 
philosophership. — Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Black  Care  was  still  in  the  background,  but  had  relaxed 
her  hold  upon  him.  His  spirits  rose  to  the  old  point  of 
gaiety.  He  writes  how  he  g^ves  a  lively  lecture  to  his 
students,  and  in  the  midst  of  it  Satan  prompts  him  to  crow 
or  howl — ^a  temptation  happily  resisted.  He  makes  atro- 
cious puns  in  bidding  Hooker  to  the  wedding,  which  took 
place  on  July  21. 

JeRMYN   STKEET.Jufy  6.  1855. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  ought  long  since  to  have  thanked  you 
in  Thomson's  name  as  well  as  my  own  for  your  Flora  Indica, 
Some  day  I  promise  myself  much  pleasure  and  profit  from  the 
digestion  of  the  Introductory  Essay,  which  is  probably  as  much 
as  my  gizzard  is  competent  to  convert  into  nutrition. 

I  terminate  my  Baccalaureate  and  take  my  degree  of  M.A.- 
trimony  (isn't  that  atrocious?)  on  Saturday,  July  21.  After  the 
unhappy  criminals  have  been  turned  off,  there  will  be  refresh- 
ment provided  for  the  sheriffs,  chaplain,  and  spectators.  Will 
you  come?  Don't  if  it  is  a  bore,  but  I  should  much  like  to  have 
you  there. 


I40  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  ix 

It  was  not  a  large  party  that  assembled  at  the  George 
Huxleys  for  the  wedding,  but  all  were  life-long  friends,  in- 
cluding, besides  the  Fanning  clan  and  Mrs.  Griffiths,  an 
old  Australian  ally.  Hooker,  Tyndall,  and  Dr.  and  Mrs. 
Carpenter.  There  was  none  present  but  felt  that  abundant 
happiness  was  at  least  well  earned  after  eight  years  of  trial, 
and  still  more  that  its  best  guarantee  was  the  firm  loyalty 
and  devotion  that  had  passed  through  so  many  dangers  of 
absence  and  isolation,  so  many  temptations  to  renounce  the 
ideal  course  under  stress  of  circumstance,  only  to  emerge 
strengthened  and  ennobled  by  the  stern  discipline  of  much 
sacrifice. 

Great  as  was  his  new  happiness,  he  hardly  stood  in  need 
of  Darwin's  word  of  warning :  "  I  hope  your  marriage  will 
not  make  you  idle ;  happiness,  I  fear,  is  not  good  for  work." 
Huxley  could  not  sit  idle  for  long.  If  he  had  no  occupation 
on  hand,  something  worth  investigation — and  thorough  in- 
vestigation— was  sure  to  catch  his  eye.  So  he  writes  to 
Hooker  from  Tenby : — 

15  St.  Julian's  Terrace,  Tenby, 
Aug,  16,  1855. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  am  so  near  the  end  of  the  honeymoon 
that  I  think  it  can  hardly  be  immodest  if  I  emerge  from  private 
life  and  write  you  a  letter,  more  particularly  as  I  want  to  know 
something.  I  went  yesterday  on  an  expedition  to  see  the  re- 
mains of  a  forest  which  exists  between  tidemarks  at  a  place 
called  Amroth,  near  here. 

So  far  as  I  can  judge  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  really 
is  a  case  of  downward  movement.  The  stools  of  the  trees  are 
in  their  normal  position,  and  their  roots  are  embedded  and  in- 
terwoven in  a  layer  of  stiff  blue  clay,  which  lies  immediately 
beneath  the  superficial  mud  of  the  shore.  Layers  of  leaves, 
too,  are  mixed  up  with  the  clay  in  other  parts,  and  the  bark  of 
some  of  the  trees  is  in  perfect  preservation.  The  condition  of 
the  wood  is  very  curious.  It  is  like  very  hard  cheese,  so  that 
you  can  readily  cut  slices  with  a  spade,  and  yet  where  more  of 
the  trunk  has  been  preserved  some  parts  are  very  hard.  The 
trees  are,  I  fancy.  Beech  and  Oak.  Could  you  identify  slices  if 
I  were  to  send  you  some  ? 

Now  it  seems  to  me  that  here  is  an  opportunity  one  does 
not  often  have  of  getting  some  information  about  the  action  of 


i855  SEEKS  INFORMATION  141 

sea  water  on  wood,  and  on  the  mode  in  which  these  vegetable 
remains  may  become  embedded,  etc.  etc.,  and  I  want  to  get  you 
to  tell  me  where  I  can  find  information  on  submerged  forests  in 
general,  so  as  to  see  to  what  points  one  can  best  direct  one's 
attention,  and  to  suggest  any  inquiries  that  may  strike  yourself. 

I  do  not  see  how  the  stumps  can  occur  in  this  position  with- 
out direct  sinking  of  the  land,  and  that  such  a  sinking  should 
have  occurred  tallies  very  well  with  some  other  facts  which 
I  have  observed  as  to  the  nature  of  the  bottom  at  considerable 
depths  here. 

We  had  the  jolliest  cruise  in  the  world  by  Oxford,  War- 
wick, Kenilworth,  Stratford,  Malvern,  Ross,  and  the  Wye, 
though  it  was  a  little  rainy,  and  though  my  wife's  strength  sadly 
failed  at  times. 

Still  she  was  on  the  whole  much  better  and  stronger  than 
I  had  any  right  to  expect,  and  although  I  get  frightened  every 
now  and  then,  yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  she  is  steadily 
though  slowly  improving.  I  have  no  fears  for  the  ultimate 
result,  but  her  amendment  will  be  a  work  of  time.  We  have 
really  quite  settled  down  into  Darby  and  Joan,  and  I  begin  to 
regard  matrimony  as  the  normal  state  of  man.  It's  wonderful 
how  light  the  house  looks  when  I  come  back  weary  with  a  day's 
boating  to  what  it  used  to  do. 

I  hope  Mrs.  Hooker  is  well  and  about  again.  Pray  give  her 
our  very  kind  regards,  and  believe  me,  my  dear  Hooker,  ever 
yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

At  Tenby  he  stayed  on  through  August  and  September, 
continuing  his  occupations  of  the  previous  summer,  dredg- 
ing up  specimens  for  his  microscope,  and  working  partly 
for  his  own  investigations,  partly  for  the  Geological  Survey. 


CHAPTER   X 
1855-1858 

Up  to  his  appointment  at  the  School  of  Mines,  Huxley's 
work  had  been  almost  entirely  morphological,  dealing  with 
the  Invertebrates.  His  first  investigations,  moreover,  had 
been  directed  not  to  species-hunting,  but  to  working  out  the 
real  affinities  of  little  known  orders,  and  thereby  evolving 
a  philosophical  classification  from  the  limbo  of  "  Vermes  " 
and  "  Radiata." 

He  had  continued  the  same  work  by  tracing  homologies 
of  development  in  other  classes  of  animals,  such  as  the 
Cephalous  Mollusca,  the  Articulata,  and  the  Brachiopods. 
On  these  subjects,  also,  he  had  a  good  deal  of  correspond- 
ence with  other  investigators  of  the  same  cast  of  mind,  and 
even  when  he  did  not  carry  conviction,  the  impression  made 
by  his  arguments  may  be  judged  from  the  words  of  Dr.  All- 
man,  no  mean  authority,  in  a  letter  of  May  2,  1852 : — 

I  have  thought  over  your  arguments  again  and  again,  and 
while  I  am  the  more  convinced  of  their  ingenuity,  originality, 
and  strength,  I  yet  feel  ashamed  to  confess  that  I  too  must  ex- 
claim "  tenax  propositi."  When  was  it  otherwise  in  contro- 
versy ? 

Other  speculations  arising  out  of  these  researches  had 
been  given  to  the  public  in  the  form  of  lectures,  notably 
that  on  Animal  Individuality  at  the  Royal  Institution  in 
1852. 

But  after  1854,  Paleontology  and  administrative  work 
began  to  claim  much  of  the  time  he  would  willingly  have 
bestowed  upon  distinctly  zoological  research.  His  lectures 
142 


1856  LECTURER  ON   NATURAL   HISTORY  143 

on  Natural  History  of  course  demanded  a  good  deal  of 
first-hand  investigation,  and  not  only  occasional  notes  in  his 
fragmentary  journals,  but  a  vast  mass  of  drawings  now  pre- 
served at  South  Kensington  attest  the  amount  of  work  he 
still  managed  to  give  to  these  subjects.  But  with  the  ex- 
ception of  the  Hunterian  Lectures  of  1868,  he  only  pub- 
lished one  paper  on  Invertebrates  as  late  as  i860;  and  only 
half  a  dozen,  not  counting  the  belated  "  Oceanic  Hydro- 
zoa,"  between  1856  and  1859.  The  essay  on  the  Crayfish 
did  not  appear  until  after  he  had  left  Jermyn  Street  and 
Paleontology  for  South  Kensington. 

The  "  Method  of  Paleontology,"  published  in  1856,  was 
the  first  of  a  long  series  of  papers  dealing  with  fossil  crea- 
tures, the  description  of  which  fell  to  him  as  Naturalist  to 
the  Geological  Survey.  By  i860  he  had  published  twelve 
such  papers,  and  by  1871  twenty-six  more,  or  thirty-eight 
in  sixteen  years. 

It  was  a  curious  irony  of  fate  that  led  him  into  this 
position.  He  writes  in  his  Autobiography  that,  when  Sir 
Henry  de  la  Beche,  th^  Director-General  of  the  Geological 
Survey,  offered  him  the  post  Forbes  vacated  of  Paleontolo- 
gist and  Lecturer  on  Natural  History, 

I  refused  the  former  point  blank,  and  accepted  the  latter 
only  provisionally,  telling  Sir  Henry  that  I  did  not  care  for 
fossils,  and  that  I  should  give  up  Natural  History  as  soon  as 
I  could  get  a  physiological  post  But  I  held  the  office  for  thirty- 
one  years,  and  a  large  part  of  my  work  has  been  paleontological. 

Yet  the  diversion  was  not  without  great  use.  A  wide 
knowledge  of  paleontology  offered  a  key  to  many  problems 
that  were  hotly  debated  in  the  years  of  battle  following  the 
publication  of  the  Origin  of  Species  in  1859,  ^s  well  as  pro- 
viding fresh  subject-matter  for  the  lectures  in  which  he  con- 
tinued to  give  the  lay  world  the  results  of  his  thought. 

On  the  administrative  and  official  side  he  laid  before 
himself  the  orgatiisation  of  the  resources  of  the  Museum  of 
Practical  Geology  as  an  educational  instrument.  This  in- 
volved several  years'  work  in  the  arrangement  of  the  speci- 
mens, so  as  to  illustrate  the  paleontological  lectures,  and  the 


144 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  x 


writing  of  "  introductions  "  to  each  section  of  the  catalogue, 
which  should  be  a  guide  to  the  students.  The  "  Method  of 
Paleontology "  mentioned  above  served  as  the  prefatory 
essay  to  the  whole  catalogue,  and  was  reprinted  in  1869 
by  the  Smithsonian  Institute  of  Washington  under  the  title 
of  Principles  and  Methods  of  Paleontology. 

This  work  led  to  his  taking  a  lively  interest  in  the 
organisation  of  museums  in  general,  whether  private,  suchj 
as  Sir  Philip  Egerton's,  which  he  visited  in  1856 ;  local,  such 
as  Warwick  or  Chester ;  or  central,  such  as  the  British  Mu- 
seum or  that  at  Manchester. 

With  regard  to  the  British  Museum,  the  question  had 
arisen  of  removing  the  Natural  History  collections  from  the 
confined  space  and  dusty  surroundings  of  Great  Russell 
Street.  A  first  memorial  on  the  subject  had  been  signed, 
not  only  by  many  non-scientific  persons,  but  also  by  a 
number  of  botanists,  who  wished  to  see  the  British  Museum 
Herbarium,  etc.,  combined  with  the  more  accessible  and 
more  complete  collections  at  Kew.  Owing  apparently  to  offi- 
cial opposition,  the  Natural  History  sub-committee  of  the 
British  Museum  Trustees  advised  a  treatment  of  the  Botan- 
ical Department  which  commended  itself  to  none  of  the 
leading  botanists.  Consequently  a  number  of  botanists  and 
zoologists  took  counsel  together  and  drew  up  a  fresh  memo- 
rial from  the  strictly  scientific  point  of  view.  Huxley  and 
Hooker  took  an  active  part  in  the  agitation.  "  It  is  no  use," 
writes  the  former  to  his  friend,  "  putting  any  faith  in  the  old 
buffers,  hardened  as  they  are  in  trespasses  and  sin."  And 
again : — 

I  see  nothing  for  it  but  for  you  and  I  to  constitute  ourselves 
into  a  permanent  "  Committee  of  Public  Safety,"  to  watch  over 
what  is  being  done  and  take  measures  with  the  advice  of  others 

when  necessary.  ...  As  for  and  id  genus  omne,  I  have 

never  expected  anything  but  opposition  from  them.  But  I 
don't  think  it  is  necessary  to  trouble  one's  head  about  such 
opposition.  It  may  be  annoying  and  troublesome,  but  if  we  are 
beaten  by  it  we  deserve  to  be.  We  shall  have  to  wade  through 
oceans  of  trouble  and  abuse,  but  so  long  as  we  gain  our  end, 
I  care  not  a  whistle  whether  the  sweet  voices  of  the  scientific 
mob  are  with  me  or  against  me. 


1856  MUSEUMS  AND   THEIR   ARRANGEMENT  145 

According  to  Huxley's  views  a  complete  system  de- 
manded a  triple  museum  for  each  subject,  Zoology  and 
Botany,  since  Geology  was  sufficiently  provided  for  in 
Jermyn  Street— one  typical  or  popular,  "  in  which  all  promi- 
nent forms  or  types  of  animals  or  plants,  recent  or  fossil, 
should  be  so  displayed  as  to  give  the  public  an  idea  of  the 
vast  extent  and  variety  of  natural  objects,  to  diffuse  a 
general  knowledge  of  the  results  obtained  by  science  in  their 
investigation  and  classification,  and  to  serve  as  a  general 
introduction  to  the  student  in  Natural  Science  " ;  the  second 
scientific,  "  in  which  collections  of  all  available  animals  and 
plants  and  their  parts,  whether  recent  or  fossil,  and  in  a 
sufficient  number  of  specimens,  should  be  disposed  con- 
veniently for  study,  and  to  which  should  be  exclusively 
attached  an  appropriate  library,  or  collection  of  books  and 
illustrations  relating  to  science,  quite  independent  of  any 
general  library";  the  third  economic,  "in  which  economic 
products,  whether  zoological  or  botanical,  with  illustrations 
of  the  processes  by  which  they  are  obtained  and  applied  to 
use,  should  be  so  disposed  as  best  to  assist  the  progress  of 
Commerce  and  the  Arts."  It  demanded  further  a  Zoological 
and  a  Botanical  Garden,  where  the  living  specimens  could  be 
studied. 

Some  of  these  institutions  existed,  but  were  not  under 
state  control.  Others  were  already  begun — €,g.  that  of 
Economic  Zoology  at  South  Kensington ;  but  the  value  of 
the  botanical  collections  was  minimised  by  want  of  concen- 
tration, while  as  to  zoology  "  the  British  Museum  contains 
a  magnificent  collection  of  recent  and  fossil  animals,  the 
property  of  the  state,  but  there  is  no  room  for  its  proper 
display  and  no  accommodation  for  its  proper  study.  Its 
official  head  reports  directly  neither  to  the  Government  nor 
to  the  governing  body  of  the  institution.  ...  It  is  true 
that  the  people  stroll  through  the  enormous  collections  of  the 
British  Museum,  but  the  sole  result  is  that  they  are  dazzled 
and  confused  by  the  multiplicity  of  unexplained  objects, 
and  the  man  of  science  is  deprived  thrice  a  week  of  the 
means  of  advancing  knowledge." 

The  agitation  of  1859-60  bore  fruit  in  due  season,  and 


146  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  x 

within  twenty  years  the  ideal  here  sketched  was  to  a  great 
extent  realised,  as  any  visitor  to  the  Natural  History  Mu- 
seum at  South  Kensington  can  see  for  himself. 

The  same  principles  are  reiterated  in  his  letter  of  Janu- 
ary 25,  1868,  to  the  Commissioners  of  the  Manchester 
Natural  History  Society,  who  had  asked  his  advice  as  to 
the  erection  of  a  museum.  But  to  the  principles  he  adds  a 
number  of  most  practical  suggestions  as  to  the  actual  struc- 
ture of  the  building,  which  are  briefly  appended  in  abstract. 
The  complement  to  this  is  a  letter  of  1872,  giving  advice 
as  to  a  local  museum  at  Chester,  and  one  of  1859  describ- 
ing the  ideal  catalogue  for  a  geological  museum. 

Jan,  25,  1868. 
The  Commissioners  of  the  Manchester 
Natural  History  Society. 

Scheme  for  a  Museum. 

Objects, — I.  The  public  exhibition  of  a  collection  of  speci- 
mens large  enough  to  illustrate  all  the  most  important  truths 
of  Natural  History,  but  not  so  extensive  as  to  weary  and  con- 
fuse ordinary  visitors. 

2.  The  accessibility  of  this  collection  to  the  public. 

3.  The  conservation  of  all  specimens  not  necessary  for  the 
purpose  defined  in.(i)  in  a  place  apart. 

4.  The  accessibility  of  all  objects  contained  in  the  museum 
to  the  curator  and  to  scientific  students,  without  interference 
with  the  public  or  by  the  public. 

5.  Thorough  exclusion  of  dust  and  dirt  from  the  specimens. 

6.  A  provision  of  space  for  workrooms,  and,  if  need  be, 
lecture-rooms. 

Principle. — A  big  hall  (350  X  40  X  30)  with  narrower  halls 
on  either  side,  lighted  from  the  top.  The  central  hall  for  the 
public,  the  others  for  the  curators,  etc.  The  walls,  of  arches 
upon  piers  about  15  ft.  high,  bearing  on  girders  a  gallery  5  ft 
wide  in  the  public  room,  and  3  ft.  6  in.  in  the  curators'. 

The  cases  should  be  larger  below,  5  ft.  deep,  and  smaller 
above,  2  ft.  deep,  with  glass  fronts  to  the  public,  and  doors  on 
the  curators'  side. 

For  very  large  specimens — e.g.  a  whale — the  case  could 
expand  into  the  curators'  part  without  encroaching  on  the  public 
part,  so  as  to  keep  the  line  of  windows  regular. 


1856  SCHEME   FOR   A   MUSEUM  147 

Specimens  of  the  Vertebrata,  illustrations  of  Physical  Geog- 
raphy and  Stratigraphical  Geology,  should  be  placed  below. 

The  Invertebrata,  Botanical  and  Mineralogical  specimens  in 
the  galleries. 

The  partition  to  be  continued  above  the  galleries  to  the  roof, 
thus  excluding  all  the  dust  raised  by  the  public. 

Space  for  students  should  be  provided  in  the  curators' 
rooms. 

Storage  should  be  ample. 

A  museum  of  this  size  gives  twice  as  much  area  for  ex- 
hibition purposes  as  that  offered  by  all  the  cases  in  the  present 
museum. 

ATHENiEUM  Club,  Dec,  8,  1872. 

Dear  Sir — I  regret  that  your  letter  has  but  just  come  into 
my  hands,  so  that  my  reply  cannot  be  in  time  for  your  meeting, 
which,  I  understand  you  to  say,  was  to  be  held  yesterday. 

I  have  no  hesitation  whatever  in  expressing  the  opinion 
that,  except  in  the  case  of  large  and  wealthy  towns  (and  even 
in  their  case  primarily),  a  Local  Museum  should  be  exactly 
what  its  name  implies,  viz.  "  Local " — ^illustrating  local  Geology, 
local  Botany,  local  Zoology,  and  local  Archaeology. 

Such  a  museum,  if  residents  who  are  interested  in  these 
sciences  take  proper  pains,  may  be  brought  to  a  great  degree 
of  perfection  and  be  unique  of  its  kind.  It  will  tell  both  natives 
and  strangers  exactly  what  they  want  to  know,  and  possess  great 
scientific  interest  and  importance.  Whereas  the  ordinary  lum- 
ber-room of  clubs  from  New  Zealand,  Hindoo  idols,  sharks' 
teeth,  mangy  monkeys,  scorpions,  and  conch  shells — who  shall 
describe  the  weary  inutility  of  it  ?  It  is  really  worse  than  noth- 
ing, because  it  leads  the  unwary  to  look  for  the  objects  of  sci- 
ence elsewhere  than  under  their  noses.  What  they  want  to 
know  is  that  their  "  America  is  here,"  as  Wilhelm  Meister  has 
it.— Yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Alfred  Walker,  Esq.,  Nant-y-Glyn,  Colwyn  Bay. 

To  THE  Rev.  P.  Brodie  of  Warwick 

Jermyn  Street,  Oct,  14,  1859. 
My  dear  Mr.  Brodie — I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  can  as  yet 
send  you  no  catalogue  of  ours.  The  remodelling  of  our  museum 
is  only  just  completed,  and  only  the  introductory  part  of  my 
catalogue  is  written.  When  it  is  printed  you  shall  have  an  early 
copy. 


148  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  x 

If  I  may  make  a  suggestion  I  should  say  that  a  catalogue  of 
your  museum  for  popular  use  should  commence  with  a  sketch 
of  the  topography  and  stratigraphy  of  the  county,  put  into  the 
most  intelligible  language,  and  illustrated  by  reference  to  min- 
eral specimens  in  the  cases,  and  to  the  localities  where  sections 
showing  the  superposition  of  such  and  such  beds  is  to  be  seen. 
After  that  I  think  should  come  a  list  of  the  most  remarkable 
and  interesting  fossils,  with  reference  to  the  cases  where  they 
are  to  be  seen;  and  under  the  head  of  each  a  brief  popular  ac- 
count of  the  kind  of  animal  or  plant  which  the  thing  was  when 
alive,  its  probable  habits,  and  its  meaning  and  importance  as  a 
member  of  the  great  series  of  successive  forms  of  life. — Yours 
very  faithfully,  •     T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  reorganisation  of  the  course  of  studies  at  Jermyn 
Street,  fully  sketched  out  in  the  1857  notebook,  involved 
two  very  serious  additions  to  his  work  over  and  above  what 
was  required  of  him  by  his  appointment  as  Professor.  He 
found  his  students  to  a  great  extent  lacking  in  the  know- 
ledge of  general  principles  necessary  to  the  comprehension 
of  the  special  work  before  them.  To  enable  them  to  make 
the  best  use  of  his  regular  lectures,  he  offered  them  in 
addition  a  preliminary  evening  course  of  nine  lectures  each 
January,  which  he  entitled  "  An  Introduction  to  the  Study 
of  the  Collection  of  Fossils  in  the  Museum  of  Practical 
Geology."  These  lectures  summed  up  what  he  afterwards 
named  Physiography,  together  with  a  general  sketch  of 
fossils  and  their  nature,  the  classification  of  animals  and 
plants,  their  distribution  at  various  epochs,  and  the  princi- 
ples on  which  they  are  constructed,  illustrated  by  the  ex- 
amination of  some  animal,  such  as  a  lobster. 

The  regular  lectures,  fifty-seven  in  number,  ran  from 
February  to  April  and  from  April  to  June,  with  fortnightly 
examinations  during  the  latter  period,  six  in  number.  I 
take  the  scheme  from  his  notebook : — "  After  prolegomena, 
the  physiology  and  morphology  of  lobster  and  dove;  then 
through  Invertebrates,  Anodon,  Actinia,  and  Vorticella 
Protozoa,  to  Molluscan  types.  Insects,  then  Vertebrates. 
Supplemented  Paleontologically  by  the  demonstrations  of 
the  selected  types  in  the  cases;  twelve  Paleozoic,  twelve 


i857  PRELIMINARY   LECTURES  149 

Mesozoic  and  Cainozoic/^  by  his  assistants.  "  To  make  the 
course  complete  there  should  be  added  (i)  A  series  of  lec- 
tures on  Species,  practical  discrimination  and  description, 
modification  by  conditions  and  distribution ;  (2)  Lectures 
on  the  elements  of  Botany  and  Fossil  Plants." 

This  reorganisation  of  his  course  went  hand  in  hand 
with  his  utilisation  of  the  Jermyn  Street  Museum  for  paleon- 
tological  teaching,  and  all  through  1857  he  was  busily 
working  at  the  Explanatory  Catalogue. 

Moreover,  in  1855  he  had  begun  at  Jermyn  Street  his 
regular  courses  of  lectures  to  working  men — lectures  which 
impressed  those  qualified  to  judge  as  surpassing  even  his 
class  lectures.  Year  after  year  he  gave  the  artisans  of  his 
best,  on  the  principle  enunciated  thus  early  in  a  letter  of 
February  27^  1855,  to  Dyster — 

I  enclose  a  prospectus  of  some  People's  Lectures  (Popular 
Lectures  I  hold  to  be  an  abomination  unto  the  Lord)  I  am 
about  to  give  here.  I  want  the  working  classes  to  understand 
that  Science  and  her  ways  are  great  facts  for  them — ^that  physi- 
cal virtue  is  the  base  of  all  other,  and  that  they  are  to  be  clean 
and  temperate  and  all  the  rest — ^not  because  fellows  in  black 
with  white  ties  tell  them  so,  but  because  these  are  plain  and 
patent  laws  of  nature  which  they  must  obey  "  under  penalties." 

I  am  sick  of  the  dilettante  middle  class,  and  mean  to  try 
what  I  can  do  with  these  hard-han4ed  fellows  who  live  among 
facts.    You  will  be  with  me,  I  know. 

And  again  on  May  6,  1855 : — 

I  am  glad  your  lectures  went  off  so  well.  They  were  better 
attended  than  mine  [the  Preliminary  Course],  although  in  point 
of  earnestness  and  attention  my  audience  was  all  I  could  wish. 
I  am  now  giving  a  course  of  the  same  kind  to  working  men 
exclusively— one  of  what  we  call  our  series  of  "  working  men's 
lectures,"  consisting  of  six  given  in  turn  by  each  Professor. 
The  theatre  holds  600,  and  is  crammed  full. 

I  believe  in  the  fustian,  and  can  talk  better  to  it  than  to 
any  amount  of  gauze  and  Saxony;  and  to  a  fustian  audience 
(but  to  that  only)  I  would  willingly  g^ve  some  when  I  come  to 
Tenby. 

The  corresponding  movement  set  going  by  F.  D. 
Maurice  also  claimed  his  interest,  and  in  1857  he  gave  his 


ISO 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  x 


first  address  at  the  Working  Men's  College  to  an  audience, 
as  he  notes,  of  some  fifty  persons,  including  Maurice  him- 
self. 

Other  work  of  importance  was  connected  with  the  Royal 
Institution.  He  had  been  elected  to  deliver  the  triennial 
course  as  Fullerian  Professor,  and  for  his  subject  in  1856-57 
chose  Physiology  and  Comparative  Anatomy ;  in  1858,  the 
Principles  of  Biology. 

He  was  extremely  glad  of  the  additional  "  grist  to  the 
mill  "  brought  in  by  these  lectures.    As  he  wrote  in  1890: — 

I  have  good  reason  to  know  what  diflference  a  hundred  a 
year  makes  when  your  income  is  not  more  than  four  or  five 
times  that.  I  remember  when  I  was  candidate  for  the  Fullerian 
professorship  some  twenty-three  years  ago,  a  friend  of  mine 
asked  a  wealthy  manager  to  support  me.  He  promised,  but 
asked  the  value  of  the  appointment,  and  when  told,  said,  "  Well, 
but  what's  the  use  of  a  hundred  a  year  to  him  ?  "  I  suppose  he 
paid  his  butler  that. 

A  further  attempt  to  organise  scientific  work  throughout 
the  country  and  make  its  results  generally  known,  dates 
from  this  time.  Huxley,  Hooker,  and  Tyndall  had  dis- 
cussed, early  in  1858,  the  possibility  of  starting  a  Scientific 
Review,  which  should  do  for  science  what  the  Quarterly 
or  the  Westminster  did  for.literature.  The  scheme  was  found 
not  to  be  feasible  at  the  time,  though  it  was  revived  in 
another  form  in  i860 ;  so  in  the  meanwhile  it  was  arranged 
that  science  should  be  laid  before  the  public  every  fortnight, 
through  the  medium  of  a  scientific  column  in  the  Saturday 
Review.    The  following  letter  bears  on  this  proposal: — 

April  20, 1858. 

My  dear  Hooker — Before  the  dawn  of  the  proposal  for  the 
ever-memorable  though  not-to-be  Scientific  Review,  there  had 
been  some  talk  of  one  or  two  of  us  working  the  public  up  for 
science  through  the  Saturday  Review,  Maskelyne  (you  know 
him,  I  suppose)  was  the  suggester  of  the  scheme,  and  undertook 
to  talk  to  the  Saturday  people  about  it. 

I  thought  the  whole  affair  had  dropped  through,  but  yester- 
day Maskelyne  came  to  me  and  to  Ramsay  with  definite  propo- 
sitions from  the  Saturday  editor. 


1858  SCIENCE   IN   THE   SATURDAY  REVIEW  151 

He  undertakes  to  put  in  a  scientific  article  in  the  inter- 
mediate part  between  Leaders  and  Reviews  once  a  fortnight  if 
we  will  supply  him.  He  is  not  to  mutilate  or  to  alter,  but  to 
take  what  he  gets  and  be  thankful. 

The  writers  to  select  their  own  subjects.  Now  the  question 
is,  Will  seven  or  eight  of  us,  representing  different  sciences, 
join  together  and  undertake  to  supply  at  least  one  article  in 
three  months  ?  Once  a  fortnight  would  want  a  minimum  of  six 
articles  in  three  months,  so  that  if  there  were  six,  each  man 
must  supply  one. 

Sylvester  is  talked  of  for  Mathematics.  I  am  going  to  write 
to  Tyndall  about  doing  Physics.  Maskelyne  and  perhaps  Frank- 
land  will  take  Chemistry  and  Mineralogy.  You  and  I  might  do 
Biology;  Ramsay,  Geology;  Smyth,  Technology. 

This  looks  to  me  like  a  very  feasible  plan,  not  asking  too 
much  of  anyone,  and  yet  giving  all  an  opportunity  of  saying 
what  he  has  to  say. 

Besides  this  the  Saturday  would  be  glad  to  get  Reviews 
from  us. 

If  all  those  mentioned  agree  to  join,  we  will  meet  some- 
where and  discuss  plans. 

Let  me  have  a  line  to  say  what  you  think,  and  believe  me, 
ever  yours  faithfally,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  1858  he  read  three  papers  at  the  Geological  and  two 
at  the  Linnean;  he  lectured  (February  15)  on  Fish  and 
Fisheries  at  South  Kensington,  and  on  May  21  gave  a 
Friday  evening  discourse  at  the  Royal  Institution  on  "  The 
Phenomena  of  Gemmation."  He  wrote  an  article  for  Todd's 
Cyclopaedia^  on  the  Tegumentary  Organs,  an  elaborate  paper, 
as  Sir  M.  Foster  says,  on  a  histological  theme,  to  which, 
as  to  others  of  the  same  class  on  the  Teeth  and  the  Cor- 
puscula  Tactus  (Q.  J.  Micr.  Sci.  1853-4),  he  had  been  "  led 
probably  by  the  desire,  which  only  gradually  and  through 
lack  of  fulfilment  left  him,  to  become  a  physiologist  rather 
than  a  naturalist." 

No  less  important  was  his  more  general  work  for  sci- 
ence. Physiological  study  in  England  at  this  time  was 
dominated  by  transcendental  notions.  To  put  first  princi- 
ples on  a  sound  experimental  basis  was  the  aim  of  the  new 
leaders  of  scientific  thought.  To  this  end  Huxley  made 
II 


152  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  x 

two  contributions  in  1858 — one  on  the  general  subject  of 
the  cell  theory,  the  other  on  the  particular  question  of  the 
development  of  the  skull.  "  In  a  striking  *  Review  of  the 
Cell  Theory/  "  says  Sir  M.  Foster,  "  which  appeared  in  the 
British  and  Foreign  Medical  Review  in  1858,  a  paper  which 
more  than  one  young  physiologist  at  the  time  read  with 
delight,  and  which  even  to-day  may  be  studied  with  no 
little  profit,  he,  in  this  subject  as  in  others,  drove  the  sword 
of  rational  inquiry  through  the  heart  of  conceptions,  meta- 
physical and  transcendental,  but  dominant" 

Of  this  article  Professor  E.  Ray  Lankester  also  writes : — 

.  .  .  Indeed  it  is  a  fundamental  study  in  morphology.  The 
extreme  interest  and  importance  of  the  views  put  forward  in 
that  article  may  be  judged  of  by  the  fact  that  although  it  is 
forty  years  since  it  was  published,  and  although  our  knowledge 
of  cell  structure  has  made  inmiense  progress  during  those  forty 
years,  yet  the  main  contention  of  that  article,  viz.  that  cells  are 
not  the  cause  but  the  result  of  organisation — in  fact,  are,  as  he 
says,  to  the  tide  of  life  what  the  line  of  shells  and  weeds  on  the 
sea-shore  is  to  the  tide  of  the  living  sea — is  even  now  being  re- 
asserted, and  in  a  slightly  modified  form  is  by  very  many  cytolo- 
gists  admitted  as  having  more  truth  in  it  than  the  opposed  view 
and  its  later  outcomes,  to  the  effect  that  the  cell  is  the  unit  of 
life  in  which  and  through  which  alone  living  matter  manifests 
its  activities. 

The  second  was  his  Croonian  Lecture  of  1858,  "  On  the 
Theory  of  the  Vertebrate  Skull,"  in  which  he  demonstrated 
from  the  embryological  researches  of  Rathke  and  others, 
that  after  the  first  step  the  whole  course  of  development 
in  the  segments  of  the  skull  proceeded  on  different  lines 
from  that  of  the  vertebral  column ;  and  that  Oken's  imagi- 
native theory  of  the  skull  as  modified  vertebrae,  logically 
complete  down  to  a  strict  parallel  between  the  subsidiary 
head-bones  and  the  limbs  attached  to  the  spine,  outran 
the  facts  of  a  definite  structure  common  to  all  vertebrates 
which  he  had  observed.* 

*  **  Following  up  Rathke,  he  strove  to  substitute  for  the  then  domi- 
nant fantastic  doctrines  of  the  homologies  of  the  cranial  elements  ad- 
vocated by  Owen,  sounder  views  based  on  embryological  evidence. 


1858  THEORY  OF  THE  VERTEBRATE  SKULL  153 

With  the  demolition  of  Oken's  theory  fell  the  super- 
structure raised  by  its  chief  supporter,  Owen,  "  archetype  " 
and  all. 

It  was  undoubtedly  a  bold  step  to  challenge  thus  openly 
the  man  who  was  acknowledged  as  the  autocrat  of  science 
in  Britain.  Moreover,  though  he  had  long  felt  that  on  his 
own  subjects  he  was  Owen's  master,  to  begin  a  controversy 
was  contrary  to  his  deliberate  practice.  But  now  he  had 
the  choice  of  submitting  to  arbitrary  dictation  or  securing 
himself  from  further  aggressions  by  dealing  a  blow  which 
would  weaken  the  authority  of  the  aggressor.  For  the 
growing  antagonism  between  him  and  Owen  had  come  to 
a  head  early  in  the  preceding  year,  when  the  latter,  taking 
advantage  of  the  permission  to  use  the  lecture-theatre  at 
Jermyn  Street  for  the  delivery  of  a  paleontological  course, 
unwarrantably  assumed  the  title  of  Professor  of  Paleontol- 
ogy at  the  School  of  Mines,  to  the  obvious  detriment  of 
Huxley's  position  there.  His  explanations  not  satisfying 
the  council  of  the  School  of  Mines,  Huxley  broke  off  all 
personal  intercourse  with  him. 

He  exposed  the  futility  of  attempting  to  regard  the  skull  as  a  series  of 
segments,  in  each  of  which  might  be  recognised  all  the  several  parts 
of  a  vertebra,  and  pointed  out  the  errors  of  trusting  to  superficial  re- 
semblances of  shape  and  position.  He  showed,  by  the  history  of  the 
development  of  each,  that,  though  both  skull  and  vertebral  column  are 
segmented,  the  one  and  the  other,  after  an  early  stage,  are  fashioned 
on  lines  so  different  as  to  exclude  all  possibility  of  regarding  the  de- 
tailed features  of  each  as  mere  modifications  of  a  type  repeated  along 
the  axis  of  the  body.  '  The  spinal  column  and  the  skull  start  from  the 
same  primitive  condition,  whence  they  immediately  begin  to  diverge.* 
*  It  may  be  true  to  say  that  there  is  a  primitive  identity  of  structure 
between  the  spinal  or  vertebral  column  and  the  skull ;  but  it  is  no 
more  true  that  the  adult  skull  is  a  modified  vertebral  column  than  it 
would  be  to  affirm  that  the  vertebral  column  is  modified  skull.*  This 
lecture  marked  an  epoch  in  England  in  vertebrate  morphology,  and 
the  views  enunciated  in  it  carried  forward,  if  somewhat  modified,  as 
they  have  been,  not  only  by  Huxley's  subsequent  researches  and  by 
those  of  his  disciples,  but  especially  by  the  splendid  work  of  Gegen- 
baur,  are  still,  in  the  main,  the  views  of  the  anatomists  of  to-day.** — 
Sir  M.  Foster,  Royal  Society  Obituary  Notice  of  T.  H.  Huxley. 


CHAPTER   XI 
1857-1858 

Throughout  this  period  his  health  was  greatly  tried 
by  the  strain  of  his  work  and  life  in  town.  Headache! 
headache!  is  his  repeated  note  in  the  early  part  of  1857, 
and  in  1858  we  find  such  entries  as: — ^**  Feb.  11. — Used 
up.  Hypochondrical  and  bedevilled."  "  Ditto  12."  "  13. 
— Not  good  for  much."  "21. — ^Toothache,  incapable  all 
day."  And  again: — "March  30. — ^Voiceless."  "31. — 
Missed  lecture."  And,  "April  i. — Unable  to  go  out"  He 
would  come  in  thoroughly  used  up  after  lecturing  twice  on 
the  same  day,  as  frequently  happened,  and  lie  wearily  on 
one  sofa ;  while  his  wife,  whose  health  was  wretched,  matched 
him  on  the  other.  Yet  he  would  go  down  to  a  lecture  feel- 
ing utterly  unable  to  deliver  it,  and,  once  started,  would 
carry  it  through  successfully — ^at  what  cost  of  nervous  en- 
ergy was  known  only  to  those  two  at  home. 

But  there  was  another  branch  of  work,  that  for  the 
Geological  Survey,  which  occasionally  took  him  out  of 
London,  and  the  open-air  occupation  and  tramping  from 
place  to  place  did  him  no  little  good.  Thus,  through  the 
greater  part  of  September  and  October  1856  he  ranged  the 
coasts  of  the  Bristol  Channel  from  Weston  to  Clovelly,  and 
from  Tenby  to  Swansea,  preparing  a  "  Report  on  the  Recent 
Changes  of  Level  in  the  Bristol  Channel."  "  You  can't 
think,"  he  writes  from  Braunton  on  October  3,  "  how  well 
I  am,  so  long  as  I  walk  eight  or  ten  miles  a  day  and  don't 
work  too  much,  but  I  find  fifteen  or  sixteen  miles  my  limit 
for  comfort." 

For  many  years  after  this  his  favourite  mode  of  recruit- 
154 


1856  IN   SWITZERLAND  155 

ing  from  the  results  of  a  spell  of  overwork  was  to  take  a 
short  walking  tour  with  a  friend.  In  April  1857  he  is  off 
for  a  week  to  Cromer;  in  i860  he  goes  with  Busk  and 
Hooker  for  Christmas  week  to  Snowdon ;  another  time  he 
is  manoeuvred  off  by  his  wife  and  friends  to  Switzerland 
with  Tyndall. 

In  Switzerland  he  spent  his  summer  holidays  both  in 
1856  and  1857,  in  the  latter  year  examining  the  glaciers 
with  Tyndall  scientifically,  as  well  as  seeking  pleasure  by 
the  ascent  of  Mont  Blanc.  As  fruits  of  this  excursion  were 
published  late  in  the  same  year,  his  "  Letter  to  Mr.  Tyndall 
on  the  Structure  of  Glacier  Ice  "  (Phil.  Mag.  xiv.  1857),  and 
the  paper  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  of  the  Royal 
Society,  which  appeared — much  against  his  will — in  the  joint 
names  of  himself  and  Tyndall.  Of  these  he  wrote  in  1893 
in  answer  to  an  inquiry  on  the  subject : — 

By  the  Observations  on  Glaciers  I  imagine  you  refer  to  a 
short  paper  published  in  Phil.  Mag.  that  embodied  results  of  a 
little  bit  of  work  of  my  own.  The  Glacier  paper  in  the  Phil. 
Trans,  is  essentially  and  in  all  respects  Professor  Tyndall's. 
He  took  up  glacier  work  in  consequence  of  a  conversation  at 
my  table,  and  we  went  out  to  Switzerland  together,  and  of 
course  talked  over  the  matter  a  good  deal.  However,  except  for 
my  friend's  insistence,  I  should  not  have  allowed  my  name  to 
appear  as  joint  author,  and  I  doubt  whether  I  ought  to  have 
yielded.    But  he  is  a  masterful  man  and  over-generous. 

And  in  a  letter  to  Hooker  he  writes : — 

By  the  way,  you  really  must  not  associate  me  with  Tyndall 
and  talk  about  our  theory.  My  sole  merit  in  the  matter  (and  for 
that  I  do  take  some  credit)  is  to  have  set  him  at  work  at  it,  for 
the  only  suggestion  I  made,  viz.  that  the  veined  structure  was 
analogous  to  his  artificial  cleavage  phenomena,  has  turned  out 
to  be  quite  wrong. 

Tyndall  fairly  made  me  put  my  name  to  that  paper,  and 
would  have  had  it  first  if  I  would  have  let  him,  but  if  people 
go  on  ascribing  to  me  any  share  in  his  admirable  work  I  shall 
have  to  make  a  public  protest.  All  I  am  content  to  share  is  the 
row,  if  there  is  to  be  one. 

The  following  letters  to  Hooker  and  Tyndall  touch  upon 
his  Swiss  trips  of  1856  and  1857 : — 


156  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xi 

Berne,  Sept.  3,  1856. 

I  send  you  a  line  hence,  having  forgotten  to  write  from 
Interlaken,  whence  we  departed  this  morning. 

The  Weissthor  expedition  was  the  most  successful  thing 
you  can  imagine.  We  reached  the  Riflfelberg  in  iij  hours,  the 
first  six  being  the  hardest  work  I  ever  had  in  my  life  in  the 
climbing  way,  and  the  last  five  carrying  us  through  the  most 
glorious  sight  I  ever  witnessed.  During  the  latter  part  of  the 
day  there  was  not  a  cloud  on  the  whole  Monte  Rosa  range,  so 
you  may  imagine  what  the  Matterhorn  and  the  rest  of  them 
looked  like  from  the  wide  plain  of  neve  just  below  the  Weissthor. 
It  was  quite  a  new  sensation,  and  I  would  not  have  missed  it 
for  any  amount;  and  besides  this  I  had  an  opportunity  of  ex- 
amining the  n^ve  at  a  very  great  height.  A  regularly  stratified 
section,  several  hundred  feet  high,  was  exposed  on  the  Cima  di 
Jazi,  and  I  was  convinced  that  the  Weissthor  would  be  a  capital 
spot  for  making  observations  on  the  nev^  and  on  other  correl- 
ative matters.  There  are  no  difficulties  in  the  way  of  getting 
up  to  it  from  the  Zermatt  side,  tough  job  as  it  is  from  Macug- 
naga,  and  we  might  readily  rig  a  tent  under  shelter  of  the  ridge. 
That  would  lick  old  Saussure  into  fits.  All  the  Zermatt  guides 
put  the  S.  Theodul  pass  far  beneath  the  Weissthor  in  point  of 
difficulty;  and  you  may  tell  Mrs.  Hooker  that  they  think  the 
;  S.  Theodul  easier  than  the  Monte  Moro.  The  best  of  the  joke 
was  that  I  lost  my  way  in  coming  down  the  Riffelberg  to  Zer- 
matt the  same  evening,  so  that  altogether  I  had  a  long  day  of 
it.  The  next  day  I  walked  from  Zermatt  to  Visp  (recovering 
Baedeker  by  the  way),  but  my  shoes  were  so  knocked  to  pieces 
that  I  got  a  blister  on  my  heel.  Next  day  Voiture  to  Susten, 
and  then  over  Gemmi  to  Kandersteg,  and  on  Thursday  my  foot 
was  so  queer  I  was  glad  to  get  a  retour  to  Interlaken.  I  found 
most  interesting  and  complete  evidences  of  old  moraine  deposits 
all  the  way  down  the  Leuk  valley  into  the  Rhine  valley,  and 
I  believe  those  little  hills  beyond  Susten  are  old  terminal  mo- 
raines too.  On  the  other  side  I  followed  moraines  down  to 
Frutigen,  and  great  masses  of  glacial  gravel  with  boulders, 
.nearly  to  the  Lake  of  Thun. 

My  wife  is  better,  but  anything  but  strong. 

Chamounix,  Aug,  16,  1857. 
My  wife  sends  me  intelligence  of  the  good  news  you  were 
so  kind  as  to  communicate  to  her.     I  need  not  tell  you  how 
rejoiced  I  am  that  everything  has  gone  on  well,  and  diat  your 


i857  MONT   BLANC  1 57 

wife  is  safe  and  well.  Offer  her  my  warmest  cong^tulations 
and  good  wishes.  I  have  made  one  matrimonial  engagement 
for  Noel  already,  otherwise  I  would  bespeak  the  hand  of  the 
young  lady  for  him. 

It  has  been  raining  cats  and  dogs  these  two  days,  so  that 
we  have  been  unable  to  return  to  our  headquarters  at  the 
Montanvert  which  we  left  on  Wednesday  for  the  purpose  of 
going  up  Mont  Blanc.  T)mdall  (who  has  become  one  of  the 
most  active  and  daring  mountaineers  you  ever  saw — so  that  we 
have  christened  him  "  cat " ;  and  our  guide  said  the  other  day, 
"  II  va  plus  fort  qu'un  mouton.  II  faut  lui  mettre  une  sonnette  ") 
had  set  his  heart  on  the  performance  of  this  feat  (of  course 
with  purely  scientific  objects),  and  had  eqtudly  made  up  his 
mind  not  to  pay  five  and  twenty  pounds  for  the  gratification. 
So  we  had  one  guide  and  took  two  porters  in  addition  as  far  as 
the  Grands  Mulcts.  He  is  writing  to  you,  and  will  tell  you  him- 
self what  happened  to  those  who  reached  the  top — ^to  wit,  him- 
self, Hirst,  and  the  guide.  I  found  that  three  days  in  Switzer- 
land had  not  given  me  my  Swiss  legs,  and  consequently  I  re- 
mained at  the  Grands  Mulcts,  all  alone  in  my  glory,  and  for 
some  eight  hours  in  a  great  state  of  anxiety,  for  the  three  did 
not  return  for  about  that  period  after  they  were  due. 

I  was  there  on  a  pinnacle  like  St.  Simon  Stylites,  and  nearly 
as  dirty  as  that  worthy  saint  must  have  been,  but  without  any 
of  his  other  claims  to  angelic  assistance,  so  that  I  really  did  not 
see,  if  they  had  fallen  into  a  crevasse,  how  I  was  to  help  either 
them  or  myself.  They  came  back  at  last,  just  as  it  was  growing 
dusk,  to  my  inexpressible  relief,  and  the  next  day  we  came  down 
here — such  a  set  of  dirty,  sun-burnt,  snow-blind  wretches  as 
you  never  saw. 

We  heartily  wished  you  were  with  us.  What  we  shall  do 
next  I  neither  know  nor  care,  as  I  have  placed  myself  entirely 
under  Commodore  Tyndall's  orders;  but  I  suppose  we  shall  be 
three  or  four  days  more  at  the  Montanvert,  and  then  make  the 
tour  of  Mont  Blanc.  I  have  tied  up  six  pounds  in  one  end  of 
my  purse,  and  when  I  have  no  more  than  that  I  shall  come  back. 
Altogether  I  don't  feel  in  the  least  like  the  father  of  a  family; 
no  more  would  you  if  you  were  here.  The  habit  of  carrying  a 
pack,  I  suppose,  makes  the  "quiver  full  of  arrows"  feel  light 

115  Esplanade,  Deal.  Sept,  3,  1857. 
My  dear  Tyndall — I  don't  consider  myself  returned  until 
next  Wednesday,  when  the  establishment  of  No.  14  will  reopen 


158  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xi 

on  its  accustomed  scale  of  magnificence,  but  I  don*t  mind  letting 
you  know  I  am  in  the  flesh  and  safe  back. 

The  tour  round  Mont  Blanc  was  a  decided  success ;  in  fact, 
I  had  only  to  regret  you  were  not  with  me.  The  grand  glacier 
of  the  Allee  Blanche  and  the  view  of  Mont  Blanc  from  the 
valley  of  Aosta  were  alone  worth  all  the  trouble.  I  had  only 
one  wet  day,  and  that  I  spent  on  the  Brenon  Glacier;  for,  in 
spite  of  all  good  resolutions  to  the  contrary,  I  cannot  resist 
poking  into  the  glaciers  whenever  I  have  a  chance.  You  will 
be  interested  in  my  results,  which  we  shall  soon,  I  hope,  talk  on 
together  at  length. 

As  I  suspected,  Forbes  has  made  a  most  egregious  blunder. 
What  he  speaks  of  and  figures  as  the  "  structure  "  of  the  Brenon 
is  nothing  but  a  peculiar  arrangement  of  entirely  superficial  dirt 
bands,  dependent  on  the  structure,  but  not  it.  The  true  structure 
is  singularly  beautiful  and  well  marked  in  the  Brenon,  the  blue 
veins  being  very  close  set,  and  of  course  wholly  invisible  from 
a  distance  of  a  hundred  yards,  which  is  less  than  that  of  the 
spot  whence  Forbes'  view  of  the  (supposed)  structure  is  taken. 

I  saw  another  wonderful  thing  in  La  Brenon.  About  the 
middle  of  its  length  there  is  a  step  like  this  of  about  20  or  30 
feet  in  height.  In  the  lower  part  (B)  the  structural  planes  are 
vertical;  in  the  upper  (A)  they  dip  at  a  considerable  angle.  I 
thought  I  had  found  a  case  of  unconformability,  indicating  a 
slip  of  one  portion  of  the  glacier  over  another,  but  when  I  came 
to  examine  the  intermediate  region  (X)  carefully,  I  found  the 
structural  planes  at  every  intermediate  angle,  and  consequently 
a  perfect  transition  from  the  one  to  the  other. 

I  returned  by  Aosta,  the  great  St.  Bernard,  and  the  Col  de 
Balme.  Old  Simond  was  quite  affectionate  in  his  discourse 
about  you,  and  seemed  quite  unhappy  because  you  would  not 
borrow  his  money.  He  had  received  your  remittance,  and  asked 
me  to  tell  you  so.  He  was  distressed  at  having  forgotten  to  get  ^ 
a  certificate  from  you,  so  I  said  in  mine  I  was  quite  sure  you  : 
were  well  satisfied  with  him.  ^ 

On  our  journey  he  displayed  his  characteristic  qualities, 
Je  ne  sais  pas  being  the  usual  answer  to  any  topographical  in- 
quiries with  a  total  absence  of  nerve,  and  a  general  conviction 
that  distances  were  very  great  and  that  the  weather  would  be 
bad.  However,  we  got  on  very  well,  and  I  was  sorry  to  part 
with  him. 

I  came  home  by  way  of  Neuchatel,  paying  a  visit  to  the 
Pierre  a  Bot,  which  I  have  long  wished  to  see.    My  financial 


i857  LITERARY  BALANCE-SHEET  159 

calculations  were  perfect  in  theory,  but  nearly  broke  down  in 
practice,  inasmuch  as  I  was  twice  obliged  to  travel  first-class 
when  I  calculated  on  second.  The  result  was  that  my  personal 
expenses  between  Paris  and  London  amounted  to  1.50 1 !  and  I 
arrived  at  my  own  house  hungry  and  with  a  remainder  of  a 
few  centimes.  I  should  think  that  your  fate  must  have  been 
similar. 

Many  thanks  for  writing  to  my  wife.  She  sends  her  kind- 
est remembrances  to  you. — Ever  yours,  T.  H.  H. 

The  year  1857  was  the  last  in  which  Huxley  apparently 
had  time  to  go  so  far  in  journal-writing  as  to  draw  up  a 
balance-sheet  at  the  year's  end  of  work  done  and  work 
undone.  Though  he  finds  "as  usual  a  lamentable  differ- 
ence between  agenda  and  acta;  many  things  proposed  to 
be  done  not  done,  and  many  things  not  thought  of  finished," 
still  there  is  enough  noted  to  satisfy  most  energetic  people. 
Mention  has  already  been  made  of  his  lectures — sixty-six 
at  Jermyn  Street,  twelve  Fullerian,  and  as  many  more  to 
prepare  for  the  next  year's  course ;  seven  to  working  men, 
and  one  at  the  Royal  Institution,  together  with  the  rear- 
rangement of  specimens  at  the  Jermyn  Street  Museum, 
and  the  preparation  of  the  Explanatory  Catalogue,  which 
this  year  was  published  to  the  extent  of  the  Introduction 
and  the  Tertiary  collections.  To  these  may  be  added  ex- 
aminations at  the  London  University,  where  he  had  suc- 
ceeded Dr.  Carpenter  as  examiner  in  Physiology  and  Com- 
parative Anatomy  in  1856,  reviews,  translations,  a  report 
on  Deep  Sea  Soundings,  and  ten  scientific  memoirs. 

The  most  important  of  the  unfinished  work  consists  of 
the  long-delayed  Oceanic  Hydrozoa,  the  Manual  of  Compara- 
tive Anatomy,  and  a  report  on  Fisheries.  The  rest  of  the 
unfinished  programme  shows  the  usual  commixture  of  tech- 
nical studies  in  anatomy  and  paleontology,  with  essays  on 
the  philosophical  and  educational  bearings  of  his  work.  On 
the  one  hand  are  memoirs  of  Daphnia,  Nautilus,  and  the 
Herring,  the  affinities  of  the  Paleozoic  Crustacea,  the  As- 
cidian  Catalogue  and  Positive  Histology ;  on  the  other,  the 
Literature  of  the  Drift,  a  review  of  the  present  state  of 
philosophical  anatomy,  and  a  scheme  for  arranging  the 


l6o  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xi 

Explanatory  Catalogue  to  serve  as  an  introductory  text- 
book to  the  Jermyn  Street  lectures  and  the  paleontological 
demonstrations.  Here,  too,  would  fall  a  proposed  "  Letter 
on  the  Study  of  Comparative  Anatomy,"  to  do  for  those 
subjects  what  Henslow  had  done  in  his  "  Letter "  for 
Botany. 

In  addition  to  the  fact  of  his  being  forced  to  take  up 
Paleontology,  it  was  perhaps  the  philosophic  breadth  of 
view  with  which  he  regarded  his  subject  at  any  time,  and 
the  desire  of  getting  to  the  bottom  of  each  subsidiary  prob- 
lem arising  from  it,  that  made  him  for  many  years  seem 
constantly  to  spring  aside  from  his  own  subject,  to  fly  off 
at  a  tangent  from  the  line  in  which  he  was  assured  of  un- 
rivalled success  did  he  but  devote  to  it  his  undivided  powers. 
But  he  was  prepared  to  endure  the  charge  of  desultori- 
ness  with  equanimity.  In  part,  he  was  still  studying  the 
whole  field  of  biological  science  before  he  would  claim 
to  be  a  master  in  one  department;  in  part,  he  could  not 
yet  tell  to  what  post  he  might  succeed  when  he  left — ^as 
he  fully  expected  to  leave — the  professorship  at  Jermyn 
Street. 

One  characteristic  of  his  early  papers  should  not  pass 
unnoticed.  This  was  his  familiarity  with  the  best  that  had 
been  written  on  his  subjects  abroad  as  well  as  in  England. 
Thoroughness  in  this  respect  was  rendered  easier  by  the  fact 
that  he  read  French  and  German  with  almost  as  much 
facility  as  his  mother  tongue.  "  It  is  true,  of  course,  that 
scientific  men  read  French  and  German  before  the  time  of 
Huxley;  but  the  deliberate  consultation  of  all  the  authori- 
ties available  has  been  maintained  in  historical  succession 
since  Huxley's  earliest  papers,  and  was  absent  in  the  papers 
of  his  early  contemporaries."  * 

About  this  time  his  activity  in  several  branches  of  sci- 
ence began  to  find  recognition  from  scientific  societies  at 
home  and  abroad.  In  1857  he  was  elected  honorary  mem- 
ber of  the  Microscopical  Society  of  Giessen;  and  in  the 
same  year,  of  a  more  important  body,  the  Academy  of 

♦  P.  Chalmers  Mitchell  in  Natural  Science,  August  1895. 


Portrait  from  a  Photograph  by  Maull  and  Polyblank,  1857. 


~  "'"i-       '•''•.)  '',-     S    l'f:i    •;....'/   ^7''    ■;*'•'.". 


:(t      '     -i,     r:. 


i857  ELECTED   TO  THE  ATHENiEUM  CLUB  i6l 

Breslau  (Imperialis  Academia  Caesariana  Naturae  Curioso- 
rum).    He  writes  to  Hooker: — 

14  Waverley  Place,  April  3,  1857. 

Having  subsided  from  standing  upon  my  head — which  was 
the  immediate  causation  of  your  correspondence  about  the  co- 
extension  Imp.  Acad.  Caes.  Nat.  Cur.  (don't  I  know  their 
thundering  long  title  well !) — I  have  to  say  that  I  was  born  on 
the  4th  of  May  of  the  year  1825,  whereby  I  have  now  more  or 
less  mis-spent  thirty-one  years  and  a  bittock,  nigh  on  thirty- 
two. 

Furthermore,  my  locus  natalis  is  Ealing,  in  the  county  of 
Middlesex.  Upon  my  word,  it  is  very  obliging  of  the  "  curious 
naturals,"  and  I  must  say  wholly  surprising  and  unexpected. 

I  shall  hold  up  my  head  immensely  to-morrow  when  (blessed 
be  the  Lord)  I  give  my  last  Fullerian. 

Among  other  things,  I  am  going  to  take  Cuvier's  crack  case 
of  the  'Possum  of  Montmartre  as  an  illustration  of  my  views. 

I  wondered  what  had  become  of  you,  but  the  people  have 
come  talking  about  me  this  last  lecture  or  two,  so  I  supposed 
you  had  erupted  to  Kew. 

My  glacier  article  is  out;  tell  me  what  you  think  of  it 
some  day. 

I  wrote  a  civil  note  to  Forbes  ♦  yesterday,  charging  myself 
with  my  crime,  and  I  hope  that  is  the  end  of  the  business. 

My  wife  is  mending  slowly,  and  if  she  were  here  would 
desire  to  be  remembered  to  you. 

In  December  1858  he  became  a  Fellow  of  the  Linnean, 
and  the  following  month  not  only  Fellow  but  Secretary 
of  the  Geological  Society. 

In  1858  also  he  was  elected  to  the  Athenaeum  Club 
under  Rule  2,  which  provides  that  the  committee  shall 
yearly  elect  a  limited  number  of  persons  distinguished  in 
art,  science,  or  letters.  His  proposer  was  Sir  R.  Murchison, 
who  wrote : — 

Athen MUM,  /an.  26. 
My  dear  Huxley — I  had  a  success  as  to  you  that  I  never 
had  or  heard  of  before.    Nineteen  persons  voted,  and  of  these 
eighteen  voted  for  you  and  no  one  against  you.    You,  of  course, 

*  Principal  James  Forbes,  with  whose  theory  of  glaciers  Huxley 
and  Tyndall  disagreed. 


l62  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xi 

came  in  at  the  head  of  the  poll ;  no  other  having,  i,e.  Cobden, 
more  than  eleven. — Yours  well  satisfied. 

Rod.  I.  MuRCHisoN. 

From  this  time  forth  he  corresponded  with  many  foreign 
men  of  science;  in  these  years  particularly  with  Victor 
Carus,  Lacaze  Duthiers,  Kolliker,  and  de  Quatrefages,  in 
reference  to  their  common  interest  in  the  study  of  the  in- 
vertebrates. 

At  home,  the  year  1857  opened  very  brightly  for  Hux- 
ley with  the  birth  of  his  first  child,  a  son,  on  the  eve  of 
the  New  Year.  A  Christmas  child,  the  boy  was  named 
Noel,  and  lived  four  happy  years  to  be  the  very  sunshine 
of  home,  the  object  of  passionate  devotion,  whose  sudden 
loss  struck  deeper  and  more  ineffaceably  than  any  other 
blow  that  befell  Huxley  during  all  his  life. 

As  he  sat  alone  that  December  night,  in  the  little  room 
that  was  his  study  in  the  house  in  Waverley  Place,  waiting 
for  the  event  that  was  to  bring  him  so  much  happiness  and 
so  much  sorrow,  he  made  a  last  entry  in  his  journal,  full  of 
hope  and  resolution.  In  the  blank  space  below  follows  a 
note  of  four  years  later,  when  "  the  ground  seemed  cut  from 
under  his  feet,"  yet  written  with  restraint  and  without  bit- 
terness. 

December  31,  1856." .  .  .  1856-7-8  must  still  be  "  Lehrjahre  " 
to  complete  training  in  principles  of  Histology,  Morphology, 
Physiology,  Zoology,  and  Geology  by  Monographic  Work  in 
each  Department,  i860  will  then  see  me  well  grounded  and 
ready  for  any  special  pursuits  in  either  of  these  branches. 

It  is  impossible  to  map  out  beforehand  how  this  must  be 
done..  I  must  seize  opportunities  as  they  come,  at  the  risk  of 
the  reputation  of  desultoriness. 

In  i860  I  may  fairly  look  forward  to  fifteen  or  twenty  years 
"  Meisterjahre,"  and  with  the  comprehensive  views  my  training 
will  have  given  me,  I  think  it  will  be  possible  in  that  time  to 
give  a  new  and  healthier  direction  to  all  Biological  Science. 

To  smite  all  humbugs,  however  big ;  to  give  a  nobler  tone  to 
science;  to  set  an  example  of  abstinence  from  petty  personal 
controversies,  and  of  toleration  for  everything  but  lying;  to  be 
indifferent  as  to  whether  the  work  is  recognised  as  mine  or  not, 
so  long  as  it  is  done : — are  these  my  aims  ?    i860  will  show. 


1856  BIRTH   AND  DEATH   OF  A  SON  163 

Willst  du  dir  ein  httbsch  Leben  zimmern, 
Musst  dich  ans  Vergangene  nicht  bekttmmern  ; 
Und  ware  dir  auch  was  Verloren, 
Musst  immer  thun  wie  neugeboren. 
Was  jeder  Tag  will,  sollst  du  fragen  ; 
Was  jeder  Tag  will,  wird  er  sagen. 
Musst  dich  an  eigenem  Thun  ergOtzen  ; 
Was  andere  thun,  das  wirst  du  sch&tzen. 
Besonders  keinen  Menschen  hassen 
Und  das  Obrige  Gott  ttberlasscn.* 

Half-past  ten  at  night. 

Waiting  for  my  child.  I  seem  to  fancy  it  the  pledge  that 
all  these  things  shall  be. 

Born  five  minutes  before  twelve.  Thank  God.  New 
Year's  Day,  1857. 

Sept,  20.  i860. 

And  the  same  child,  our  Noel,  our  first-born,  after  being  for 
nearly  four  years  our  delight  and  our  joy,  was  carried  off  by 
scarlet  fever  in  forty-eight  hours.  This  day  week  he  and  I  had 
a  great  romp  together.  On  Friday  his  restless  head,  with  its 
bright  blue  eyes  and  tangled  golden  hair,  tossed  all  day  upon 
his  pillow.  On  Saturday  night  the  fifteenth,  I  carried  him 
here  into  my  study,  and  laid  his  cold  still  body  here  where  I 
write.  Here  too  on  Sunday  night  came  his  mother  and  I  to  that 
holy  leave-taking. 

My  boy  is  gone,  but  in  a  higher  and  a  better  sense  than  was 
in  my  mind  when  I  wrote  four  years  ago  what  stands  above — 
I  feel  that  my  fancy  has  been  fulfilled.  I  say  heartily  and  with- 
out bitterness — Amen,  so  let  it  be. 

♦  Wilt  shape  a  noble  life  ?    Then  cast 
No  backward  glances  to  the  past. 
And  what  if  something  still  be  lost  ? 
Act  as  new-born  in  all  thou  dost. 
What  each  day  wills,  that  shalt  thou  ask  ; 
Each  day  will  tell  its  proper  task  ; 
What  others  do,  that  shalt  thou  prize. 
In  thine  own  work  thy  guerdon  lies. 
This  above  all :  hate  none.     The  rest — 
Leave  it  to  God.     He  knoweth  best. 


CHAPTER   XII 
1859-1860 

The  programme  laid  down  in  1857  was  steadily  carried 
out  through  a  great  part  of  1859.  Huxley  published  nine 
monographs,  chiefly  on  fossil  Reptilia,  in  the  proceedings 
of  the  Geological  Society  and  of  the  Geological  Survey, 
one  on  the  armour  of  crocodiles  at  the  Linnean,  and  "  Ob- 
servations on  the  Development  of  some  Parts  of  the  Skele- 
ton of  Fishes,"  in  the  Journal  of  Microscopical  Scietice. 

Among  the  former  was  a  paper  on  Stagonolepis,  a 
creature  from  the  Elgin  beds,  which  had  previously  been 
ranked  among  the  fishes.  From  some  new  remains,  which 
he  worked  out  of  the  stone  with  his  own  hands,  Huxley 
made  out  that  this  was  a  reptile  closely  allied  to  the  Croco- 
diles; and  from  this  and  the  affinities  of  another  fossil, 
Hyperodapedon,  from  neighbouring  beds,  determined  the 
geological  age  to  which  the  Elgin  beds  belonged  A  good 
deal  turned  upon  the  nature  of  the  scales  from  the  back  and 
belly  of  this  animal,  and  a  careful  comparison  with  the 
scales  of  modem  crocodiles — ^a  subject  till  then  little  inves- 
tigated— led  to  the  paper  at  the  Linnean  already  men- 
tioned. 

The  paper  on  fish-development  was  mainly  based  upon 
dissections  of  the  young  of  the  stickleback.  Fishes  had 
been  divided  into  two  classes  according  as  their  tails  are 
developed  evenly  on  either  side  of  the  line  of  the  spine, 
which  was  supposed  to  continue  straight  through  the  centre 
of  the  tail,  or  lopsided,  with  one  tail  fin  larger  than  the 
other.  This  investigation  showed  that  the  apparently  even 
development  was  only  an  extreme  case  of  lopsidedness,  the 
164 


i859  HUXLEY  AT   OXFORD  165 

continuation  of  the  "  chorda,"  which  gives  rise  to  the  spine, 
being  at  the  top  of  the  upper  fin,  and  both  fins  being  devel- 
oped on  the  same  side  of  it.  Lopsidedness  as  such,  there- 
fore, was  not  to  be  regarded  as  an  embryological  character 
in  ancient  fishes;  what  might  be  regarded  as  such  was  the 
absence  of  a  bony  sheath  to  the  end  of  the  "  chorda  "  found 
in  the  more  developed  fishes.  Further  traces  of  this  bony 
structure  were  shown  to  exist,  among  other  piscine  resem- 
blances, in  the  Amphibia.  Finally  the  embryological  facts 
now  observed  in  the  development  of  the  bones  of  the  skull 
were  of  great  importance,  "  as  they  enable  us  to  understand, 
on  the  one  hand,  the  different  modifications  of  the  palato- 
suspensorial  apparatus  in  fishes,  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
relations  of  the  components  of  this  apparatus  to  the  corre- 
sponding parts  in  other  Vertebrata/*  fishes,  reptiles,  and 
mammals  presenting  a  well-marked  series  of  gradations  in 
respect  to  this  point. 

This  part  of  the  paper  had  grown  out  of  the  investiga- 
tions begun  for  the  essay  on  the  Vertebrate  Skull,*  just  as 
that  on  Jacare  and  Caimian  from  inquiry  into  the  scales  of 
Stagonolepis. 

Thus  he  was  still  able  to  devote  most  of  his  time  to 
original  research.  But  though  in  his  letter  of  March  27, 
1855,  below,  he  says,  "  I  never  write  for  the  Reviews  now, 
as  original  work  is  much  more  to  my  taste,"  it  appears  from 
jottings  in  his  1859  notebook,  such  as  "  Whewell's  History 
of  Scientific  Ideas,  as  a  Peg  on  which  to  hang  Cuvier  arti- 
cle," that  he  again  found  it  necessary  to  supplement  his 
income  by  writing.  He  was  still  examiner  at  London  Uni- 
versity, and  delivered  six  lectures  on  Animal  Motion  at  the 
London  Institution  and  another  at  Warwick.  This  lecture 
he  had  offered  to  give  at  the  Warwick  Museum  as  some 
recognition  of  the  willing  help  he  had  received  from  the 
assistants  when  he  came  down  to  examine  certain  fossils 
there.  On  the  way  he  visited  Rolleston  at  Oxford.  The 
knowledge  of  Oxford  life  gained  from  this  and  a  later  visit 
led  him  to  write : — 

♦  Sec  p.  152. 


l66  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xii 

The  more  I  see  of  the  place  the  more  glad  I  am  that  I  elected 
to  stay  in  London.  I  see  much  to  admire  and  like;  but  I  am 
more  and  more  convinced  that  it  would  not  suit  me  as  a  resi- 
dence. 

Two  more  important  points  remain  to  be  mentioned 
among  the  occupations  of  the  year.  In  January  Huxley 
was  elected  Secretary  of  the  Geological  Society,  and  with 
this  office  began  a  form  of  administrative  work  in  the  scien- 
tific world  which  ceased  only  with  his  resignation  of  the 
Presidency  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1885. 

Part  of  the  summer  Huxley  spent  in  the  North.  On 
August  3  he  went  to  Lamlash  Bay  in  Arran.  Here  Dr. 
Carpenter  had,  in  1855,  discovered  a  convenient  cottage  on 
Holy  Island — the  only  one,  indeed,  on  the  island — well 
suited  for  naturalists;  the  bay  was  calm  and  suitable  both 
for  the  dredge  and  for  keeping  up  a  vivarium.  He  proposed 
that  either  the  Survey  should  rent  the  whole  island  at  a  cost 
of  some  £50,  or,  failing  this,  that  he  would  take  the  cottage 
himself,  if  Huxley  would  join  him  for  two  or  three  seasons 
and  share  the  expense.  Huxley  laid  the  plan  before  Sir 
R.  Murchison,  the  head  of  the  Survey,  who  consented  to  try 
the  plan  for  a  course  of  years,  during  three  months  in  each 
year.  "  But,"  he  added,  "  keep  it  experimental ;  for  there 
are  no  useful  fisheries  such  as  delight  Lord  Stanley."  Here, 
then,  with  an  ascent  of  Goatfell  for  variety  on  the  21st,  a 
month  was  passed  in  trawling,  and  experiments  on  the 
spawning  of  the  herring  appear  to  have  been  continued  for 
him  during  the  winter  in  Bute. 

On  the  29th  Huxley  left  Lamlash  for  a  trip  through 
central  and  southern  Scotland,  continuing  his  geological 
work  for  the  Survey ;  and  wound  up  by  attending  the  meet- 
ing of  the  British  Association  at  Aberdeen,  leaving  his  wife 
and  the  three  children  at  Aberdour,  on  the  Fifeshire  coast. 

From  Aberdeen,  where  Prince  Albert  was  President  of 
the  Association,  Huxley  writes  on  September  15: — 

Owens  brief  address  on  giving  up  the  presidential  chair  was 
exceedingly  good.  ...  I  shall  be  worked  like  a  horse  here. 
There  are  all  sorts  of  new  materials  from  Elgin,  besides  other 
things,  and  I  daresay  I  shall  have  to  speak  frequently.    In  point 


1858  TYNDALL  AND  THE   PHYSICAL  CHAIR  167 

« 
of  attendance  and  money  this  is  the  best  meeting  the  Associa- 
tion ever  had.     In  point  of  science,  we  shall  see.  .  .  .  Tyndall 
has  accepted  the  Physical  chair  with  us,  at  which  I  am  greatly 
delighted. 

In  this  connection  the  following  letter  to  Tyndall  is  in- 
teresting : — 

Aberdour,  Fife,  N.B.,  Sept.  5,  1859. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  met  Faraday  on  Loch  Lomond  yester- 
day, and  learned  from  him  that  you  had  returned,  whereby  you 
are  a  great  sinner  for  not  having  written  to  me.  Faraday  told 
me  you  were  all  sound,  wind  and  limb,  and  had  carried  out 
your  object,  which  was  good  to  hear. 

Have  you  had  any  letter  from  Sir  Roderick?  If  not,  pray 
call  in  Jermyn  Street  and  see  Reeks  ^  as  soon  as  possible. 

The  thing  I  have  been  hoping  for  for  years  past  has  come 
about, — Stokes  having  resigned  the  Physical  Chair  in  our  place, 
in  consequence  of  his  appointment  to  the  Cambridge  University 
Commission.  This  unfortunately  occurred  only  after  our  last 
meeting  for  the  session,  and  after  I  had  left  town,  but  Reeks 
wrote  to  me  about  it  at  once.  I  replied  as  soon  as  I  received 
his  letter,  and  told  him  that  I  would  take. upon  myself  the  re- 
sponsibility of  saying  that  you  would  accept  the  chair  if  it  were 
offered  you.  I  thought  I  was  justified  in  this  by  various  con- 
versations we  have  had;  and,  at  any  rate,  I  felt  sure  that  it  was 
better  that  I  should  get  into  a  mess  than  that  you  should  lose  the 
chance. 

I  know  that  Sir  Roderick  has  written  to  you,  but  I  imagine 
the  letter  has  gone  to  Chamounix,  so  pray  put  yourself  into 
communication  with  Reeks  at  once. 

You  know  very  well  that  the  having  you  with  us  at  Jermyn 
Street  is  a  project  that  has  long  been  dear  to  my  heart,  partly 
on  your  own  account,  but  largely  for  the  interest  of  the  school. 
I  earnestly  hope  that  there  is  no  impediment  in  the  way  of  your 
coming  to  us.  How  I  am  minded  towards  you,  you  ought  to 
know  by  this  time;  but  I  can  assure  you  that  all  the  rest  of  us 
will  receive  you  with  open  arms.    Of  that  I  am  quite  sure. 

Let  me  have  a  line  to  know  your  determination.  I  am  on 
tenterhooks  till  the  thing  is  settled. 

♦  Mr.  Trcnham  Reeks,  who  died  in  1879,  ^as  Registrar  of  the 
School  of  Mines,  and  Curator  and  Librarian  of  the  Museum  of  Practi- 
cal Geology. 

12 


l68  l-IFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xii 

Can't  you  come  up  this  way  as  you  go  to  Aberdeen  ? — Ever 
yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

PS, — I  thought  I  might  mention  the  Jermyn  Street  matter 
to  Faraday  privately,  and  did  so.  He  seemed  pleased  that  the 
offer  had  been  made. 

The  acceptance  of  the  lectureship  at  the  School  of  Mines 
brought  Tyndall  into  the  closest  contact  with  Huxley  for 
the  next  nine  years,  until  he  resigned  his  lectureship  in  1868 
on  succeeding  Faraday  as  superintendent  of  the  Royal  In- 
stitution. 

On  September  17  he  writes : — 

Yesterday  Owen  and  I  foregathered  in  Section  D.  He  read 
a  very  good  and  important  paper,  and  I  got  up  afterwards  and 
spoke  exactly  as  I  thought  about  it,  and  praising  many  parts 
of  it  strongly.  In  his  reply  he  was  unco  civil  and  compli- 
mentary, so  that  the  people  who  had  come  in  hopes  of  a  row 
were  (as  I  intended  they  should  be)  disappointed. 

A  number  of  miscellaneous  letters  of  this  period  are  here 
grouped  together. 

•  14  Waverlev  Place,  /an,  30,  1858. 

My  dear  Hooker —  ...  I  wish  you  wouldn't  be  apologetic 
about  criticism  from  people  who  have  a  right  to  criticise.  I 
always  look  upon  any  criticism  as  a  compliment,  not  but  what 
the  old  Adam  in  T.  H.  H.  will  arise  and  fight  vigorously  against 
all  impugnment,  and  irrespective  of  all  odds  in  the  way  of  au- 
thority, but  that  is  the  way  of  the  beast 

Why  I  value  your  and  TyndalFs  and  Darwin's  friendship  so 
much  is,  among  other  things,  that  you  all  pitch  into  me  when 
necessary.  You  may  depend  upon  it,  however  blue  I  may  look 
when  in  the  wrong,  it's  wrath  with  myself  and  nobody  else. 

To  HIS  Sister 

The  Government  School  of  Mines,  Jermyn  St., 
March  27,  1858. 
My  dearest  Lizzie — It  is  a  month  since  your  very  welcome 
letter  reached  me.  I  had  every  inclination  and  every  intention 
to  answer  it  at  once,  but  the  wear  and  tear  of  incessant  occupa- 
tion (for  your  letter  arrived  in  the  midst  of  my  busiest  time) 
has,  I  will  not  say  deprived  me  of  the  leisure,  but  of  that  tone 
of  mind  which  one  wants  for  writing  a  long  letter.      I  fully 


1858  LETTER  TO  HIS  SISTER  169 

understand — no  one  should  be  better  able  to  comprehend — how 
the  same  causes  may  operate  on  you,  but  do  not  be  silent  so 
long  again ;  it  is  bad  for  both  of  us.  I  have  loved  but  few  people 
in  my  life,  and  am  not  likely  to  care  for  any  more  unless  it  be 
my  children.  I  desire  therefore  rather  to  knit  more  firmly  than 
to  loosen  the  old  ties,  and  of  these  which  is  older  or  stronger 
than  ours?    Don't  let  trs  drift  asunder  ag^in. 

Your  letter  came  just  after  the  birth  of  my  second  child,  a 
little  girl.  I  registered  her  to-day  in  the  style  and  title  of  Jessie 
Oriana  Huxley.  The  second  name  is  a  family  name  of  my 
wife's  and  not,  as  you  might  suppose,  taken  from  Tennyson. 
You  will  know  why  my  wife  and  I  chose  the  first.  We  could 
not  make  you  a  godmother,  as  my  wife's  mother  is  one,  and  a 
friend  of  ours  had  long  since  applied  for  the  other  vacancy,  but 
perhaps  this  is  a  better  tie  than  that  meaningless  formality.  My 
little  son  is  fifteen  months  old;  a  fair-haired,  blue-eyed,  stout 
little  Trojan,  very  like  his  mother.  He  looks  out  on  the  world 
with  bold  confident  eyes  and  open  brow,  as  if  he  were  its  master. 
We  shall  try  to  make  him  a  better  man  than  his  father.  As  for 
the  little  one,  I  am  told  she  is  pretty,  and  slavishly  admit  the  fact 
in  the  presence  of  mother  and  nurse,  but  between  ourselves  I 
don't  see  it.  To  my  carnal  eyes  her  nose  is  the  image  of  mine, 
and  you  know  what  that  means.  For  though  wandering  up 
and  down  the  world  and  work  have  begun  to  sow  a  little  silver 
in  my  hair,  they  have  by  no  means  softened  the  outlines  of  that 
remarkable  feature. 

You  want  to  know  what  I  am  and  where  I  am — ^well,  here's 
a  list  of  titles.  T.  H.  H.,  Professor  of  Natural  History,  Govern- 
ment School  of  Mines,  Jermyn  Street;  Naturalist  to  the  Geo- 
logical Survey;  Curator  of  the  Paleontological  collections  (non- 
official  '  maid-of -all- work  in  Natural  Science  to  the  Govern- 
ment) ;  Examiner  in  Physiology  and  Comparative  Anatomy  to 
the  University  of  London ;  Fullerian  Professor  of  Physiology  to 
the  Royal  Institution  (but  that's  just  over)  ;  F.R.S.,  F.G.S.,  etc. 
Member  of  a  lot  of  Societies  and  Clubs,  all  of  which  cost  him  a 
mint  of  money.  Considered  a  rising  man  and  not  a  bad  fellow 
by  his  friends — per  contra  greatly  over-estimated  and  a  bitter 
savage  critic  by  his  enemies.  Perhaps  they  are  both  right.  I 
have  a  high  standard  of  excellence  and  am  no  respecter  of  per- 
sons, and  I  am  afraid  I  show  the  latter  peculiarity  rather  too 
much.  An  internecine  feud  rages  between  Owen  and  myself 
(more's  the  pity)  partly  on  this  account,  partly  from  other 
causes. 


I/O 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xii 


This  is  the  account  any  third  person  would  give  you  of  what 
I  am  and  of  what  I  am  doing.  He  would  probably  add  that  I 
was  very  ambitious  and  desirous  of  occupying  a  high  place  in 
the  world's  estimation.  Therein,  however,  he  would  be  mis- 
taken. An  income  sufficient  to  place  me  above  care  and  anxiety, 
and  free  scope  to  work,  are  the  only  things  I  have  ever  wished 
for  or  striven  for.  But  one  is  obliged  to  toil  long  and  hard  for 
these,  and  it  is  only  now  that  they  are  coming  within  my  grasp. 
I  gave  up  the  idea  of  going  to  Edinburgh  because  I  doubted 
whether  leaving  London  was  wise.  Recently  I  have  been 
tempted  to  put  up  for  a  good  physiological  chair  which  is  to 
be  established  at  Oxford;  but  the  Government  propose  to  im- 
prove my  position  at  the  School  of  Mines,  and  there  is  every 
probability  that  I  shall  now  permanently  remain  in  London. 
Indeed,  it  is  high  time  that  I  should  settle  down  to  one  line  of 
work.  Hitherto,  as  you  see  by  the  somewhat  varied  list  of  my 
duties,  etc.,  above,  I  have  been  ranging  over  different  parts  of  a 
very  wide  field.  But  this  apparent  desultoriness  has  been  neces- 
sary, for  I  knew  not  for  what  branch  of  science  I  should  eventu- 
ally have  to  declare  myself.  There  are  very  few  appointments 
open  to  men  of  science  in  this  country,  and  one  must  take  what 
one  can  get  and  be  thankful. 

My  health  was  very  bad  some  years  ago,  and  I  had  great 
fear  of  becoming  a  confirmed  dyspeptic,  but  thanks  to  the  pedes- 
trian tours  in  the  Alps  I  have  taken  for  the  past  two  years,  I  am 
wonderfully  better  this  session,  and  feel  capable  of  any  amount 
of  work.  It  was  in  the  course  of  one  of  these  trips  that  I  went, 
as  you  have  rightly  heard,  half  way  up  Mont  Blanc.  But  I  was 
not  in  training  and  stuck  at  the  Grands  Mulcts,  while  my  three 
companions  went  on.  I  spent  seventeen  hours  alone  on  that 
grand  pinnacle,  the  latter  part  of  the  time  in  great  anxiety,  for 
I  feared  my  friends  were  lost;  and  as  I  had  no  guide  my  own 
neck  would  have  been  in  considerable  jeopardy  in  endeavour- 
ing to  return  amidst  the  maze  of  crevasses  of  the  Glacier  des 
Bois.  But  it  was  glorious  weather  and  the  grandest  scenery 
in  the  world.  In  the  previous  year  I  saw  much  of  the  Bernese 
and  Monte  Rosa  country,  journeying  with  a  great  friend  of  mine 
well  known  as  a  natural  philosopher,  Tyndall,  and  partly  seeking 
health  and  partly  exploring  the  glaciers.  You  will  find  an  arti- 
cle of  mine  on  that  subject  in  the  Westminster  Review  for  1857. 

I  used  at  one  time  to  write  a  good  deal  for  that  Review,  prin- 
cipally the  Quarterly  notice  of  scientific  books.  But  I  never 
write  for  the  Reviews  now,  as  original  work  is  much  more  to 


1858  ENOUGH   ABOUT   MY    "  ICH  "  171 

my  taste.  The  articles  you  refer  to  are  not  mine,  as,  indeed, 
you  rightly  divined.  The  only  considerable  book  I  have  trans- 
lated is  Kolliker's  Histology — in  conjunction  with  Mr.  Busk, 
an  old  friend  of  mine.  All  translation  and  article  writing  is 
weary  work,  and  I  never  do  it  except  for  filthy  lucre.  Lecturing 
I  do  not  like  much  better;  though  one  way  or  another  I  have  to 
give  about  sixty  or  seventy  a  year. 

Now  then,  I  think  that  is  enough  about  my  "  Ich."  You 
shall  have  a  photographic  image  of  him  and  my  wife  and  child 
as  soon  as  I  can  find  time  to  have  them  done.  .  .  . 

I  Eldon  Place,  Broadstairs,  Sepf,  5,  1858. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  am  glad  Mrs.  Hooker  has  found  rest 
for  the  sole  of  her  foot.  I  returned  her  Tyndall's  letter 
yesterday. 

Wallace*s  impetus  seems  to  have  set  Darwin  going  in 
earnest,  and  I  am  rejoiced  to  hear  we  shall  learn  his  views  in 
full,  at  last.  I  look  forward  to  a  great  revolution  being  effected. 
Depend  upon  it,  in  natural  history,  as  in  everything  else,  when 
the  English  mind  fully  determines  to  work  a  thing  out,  it  will 
do  it  better  than  any  other. 

I  firmly  believe  in  the  advent  of  an  English  epoch  in  science 
and  art,  which  will  lick  the  Augustan  (which,  by  the  bye,  had 
neither  science  nor  art  in  our  sense,  but  you  know  what  I  mean) 
into  fits.  So  hooray,  in  the  first  place,  for  the  Genera  plantarum. 
I  can  quite  understand  the  need  of  a  new  one,  and  I  am  right 
glad  you  have  undertaken  it.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  in  all  respects 
the  sort  of  work  for  you,  and  exactly  adapted  to  your  environ- 
ment at  Kew.  I  remember  you  mentioned  to  me  some  time 
ago  that  you  were  thinking  of  it. 

I  wish  I  could  even  hope  that  such  a  thing  would  be  even 
attempted  in  the  course  of  this  generation  for  animals. 

But  with  animal  morphology  in  the  state  in  which  it  is  now, 
we  haVe  no  terminology  that  will  stand,  and  consequently  con- 
cise and  comparable  definitions  are  in  many  cases  impossible. 

If  old  Dom.  Gray  ♦  were  but  an  intelligent  activity  instead  of 
being  a  sort  of  zoological  whirlwind,  what  a  deal  he  might  do. 
And  I  am  hopeless  of  Owen's  comprehending  what  classification 
means  since  the  publication  of  the  wonderful  scheme  which 
adorns  the  last  edition  of  his  lectures. 

*  John  Edward  Gray  (1800-1875),  appointed  Keeper  of  the  Zoologi- 
cal Collections  in  the  British  Museum  in  1840. 


172  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xii 

As  you  say,  I  have  found  this  a  g^eat  place  for  "  work  of 
price."  I  have  finished  the  "  Oceanic  Hydrozoa "  all  but  the 
bookwork,  for  which  I  must  have  access  to  the  B.M.  Library — 
but  another  week  will  do  him.  My  notes  are  from  eight  to 
twelve  years  old,  and  really  I  often  have  felt  like  the  editor  of 
somebody  else's  posthumous  work. 

Just  now  I  am  busy  over  the  "  Croonian,"  which  must  be 
done  before  I  return.  I  have  been  pulling  at  all  the  arguments 
as  a  spider  does  at  his  threads,  and  I  think  they  are  all  strong. 
If  so  the  thing  will  do  some  good. 

I  am  perplexed  about  the  N.H.  Collections.  The  best  thing, 
I  firmly  believe,  would  be  for  the  Economic  Zoology  and  a  set 
of  well  selected  types  to  go  to  Kensington,  but  I  should  be  sorry 
to  see  the  scientific  collection  placed  under  any  such  auspices  as 
those  which  govern  the  "  Bilers."  I  don't  believe  the  clay  soil 
of  the  Regent's  Park  would  matter  a  fraction — and  to  have  a 
grand  scientific  zoological  and  paleontological  collection  for 
working  purposes  close  to  the  Gardens  where  the  living  beasts 
are,  would  be  a  g^and  thing.  I  should  not  wonder  if  the  affair 
is  greatly  discussed  at  the  B.A.  at  Leeds,  and  then,  perhaps, 
light  will  arise. 

Have  you  seen  that  madcap  Tyndall's  letter  in  the  Times? 
He'll  break  his  blessed  neck  some  day,  and  that  will  be  a  g^eat 
hole  in  the  efficiency  of  my  scientific  young  England.  We  mean 
to  return  next  Saturday,  and  somewhere  about  the  i6th  or  17th 
I  shall  go  down  to  York,  where  I  want  to  study  Plesiosaurs.  I 
shall  return  after  the  British  Association.  The  interesting  ques- 
tion arises,  Shall  I  have  a  row  with  the  Great  O.  there?  What 
a  capital  title  that  is  they  give  him  of  the  British  Cuvier.  He 
stands  in  exactly  the  same  relation  to  the  French  as  British 
brandy  to  cognac. — Ever  yours  faithfully,        T.  H.  Huxley. 

Am  I  to  send  the  Gardener's  Chronicle  on,  and  where? 
please.    I  have  mislaid  the  address. 

Jermyn  Street,  Ocf.  25,  1858. 

My  dear  Spencer — I  read  your  article  on  the  "  Archetype  " 
the  other  day  with  g^eat  delight,  particularly  the  phrase  which 
puts  the  Owenian  and  Cummingian  interpolations  on  the  same 
footing.    It  is  rayther  strong,  but  quite  just. 

I  do  not  remember  a  word  to  object  to,  but  I  think  I  could 
have  strengthened  your  argument  in  one  or  two  places.  Having 
eaten  the  food,  will  you  let  me  have  back  the  dish  ?    I  am  wind- 


1858  LETTER  TO   MRS.  SCOTT  173 

ing  up  the  "  Croonian,"  and  want  U Archetype  to  refer  to.  So 
if  you  can  let  me  have  it  I  shall  be  obliged.  When  do  you 
return? — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

14  Waverley  Place, /flif.  i,  1859. 

My  dearest  Lizzie — If  intentions  were  only  acts,  the  quan- 
tity of  letter  paper  covered  with  my  scrawl  which  you  would 
have  had  by  this  time  would  have  been  something  wonderful. 
But  I  live  at  high  pressure,  with  always  a  number  of  things 
crying  out  to  be  done,  and  those  that  are  nearest  and  call  loudest 
get  done,  while  the  others,  too  often,  don't.  However,  this  day 
shall  not  go  by  without  my  wishing  you  all  happiness  in  the 
new  year,  and  that  wish  you  know  necessarily  includes  all  be- 
longing to  you,  and  my  love  to  them. 

I  have  been  long  wanting  to  send  you  the  photographs  of 
myself,  wife,  and  boy,  but  one  reason  or  other  (Nettie's  inces- 
sant ill-health  being,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  the  chief)  has  inces- 
santly delayed  the  procuring  of  the  last  However,  at  length, 
we  have  obtained  a  tolerably  successful  one,  though  you  must 
not  suppose  that  Noel  has  the  rather  washed  out  look  of  his 
portrait  That  comes  of  his  fair  hair  and  blue  gray  eyes — for 
the  monkey  is  like  his  mother  and  has  not  an  atom  of  resem- 
blance to  me. 

He  was  two  years  old  yesterday,  and  is  the  apple  of  his 
father's  eye  and  chief  deity  of  his  mother's  pantheon,  which  at 
present  contains  only  a  god  and  goddess.  Another  is  expected 
shortly,  however,  so  that  there  is  no  fear  of  Olympus  looking 
empty. 

.  .  .  Here  is  the  26th  of  January  and  no  letter  gone  yet  .  .  . 
Since  I  began  this  letter  I  have  been  very  busy  with  lectures  and 
other  sorts  of  work,  and  besides,  my  whole  household  almost  has 
been  ill— chicks  with  whooping  cough,  mother  with  influenza,  a 
servant  ditto.  I  don't  know  whether  you  have  such  things  in 
Tennessee. 

Let  me  see  what  has  happened  to  me  that  will  interest  you 
since  I  last  wrote.  Did  I  tell  you  that  I  have  finally  made  up 
my  mind  to  stop  in  London — tlie  Government  having  made  it 
worth  my  while  to  continue  in  Jermyn  Street?  They  give  me 
£600  a  year  now,  with  a  gradual  riSe  up  to  £800,  which  I  reckon 
as  just  enough  to  live  on  if  one  keeps  very  quiet.  However, 
it  is  the  greatest  possible  blessing  to  be  paid  at  last,  and  to  be 
free  from  all  the  abominable  anxieties  which  attend  a  fluctuating 
income.    I  can  tell  you  I  have  had  a  sufficiently  hard  fight  of  it. 


174  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xri 

When  Nettie  and  I  were  young  fools  we  agreed  we  would 
marry  whenever  we  had  £200  a  year.  Well,  we  have  had  more 
than  twice  that  to  begin  upon,  and  how  it  is  we  have  kept  out  of 
the  Bench  is  a  mystery  to  me.  But  we  have,  and  I  am  inclined 
to  think  that  the  Missus  has  got  a  private  hoard  (out  of  the 
puddings)  for  Noel. 

I  shall  leave  Nettie  to  finish  this  rambling  letter.  In  the 
meanwhile,  my  best  love  to  you  and  yours,  and  mind  you  are  a 
better  correspondent  than  your  affectionate  brother,        Tom. 


To  Professor  Leuckart 

The  Government  School  of  Mines, 
Jermyn  Street,  Loudon,  January  30,  1859. 

My  dear  Sir — Our  mutual  friend,  Dr.  Harley,  informs  me 
that  you  have  expressed  a  wish  to  become  possessed  of  a  sepa- 
rate copy  of  my  lectures,  published  in  the  Medical  Times.  I 
greatly  regret  that  I  have  not  one  to  send  you.  The  publisher 
only  gave  me  half  a  dozen  separate  copies  of  the  numbers  of 
the  journal  in  which  the  Lectures  appeared.  Of  these  I  sent 
one  to  Johannes  Miiller  and  one  to  Professor  Victor  Carus, 
and  the  rest  went  to  other  friends. 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  a  mere  fragment  of  what  I  originally 
intended  to  have  published  has  appeared,  the  series  having  been 
concluded  when  I  reached  the  end  of  the  Crustacea.  To  say 
truth,  the  Lectures  were  not  fitted  for  the  journal  in  which  they 
appeared. 

I  did  not  know  that  anyone  in  Germany  had  noticed  them 
until  I  received  the  copy  of  your  Bericht  for  1856,  which  you 
were  kind  enough  to  send  me.  I  owe  you  many  thanks  for  the 
manner  in  which  you  speak  of  them,  and  I  assure  you  it  was  a 
source  of  great  pleasure  and  encouragement  to  me  to  find  so 
competent  a  judge  as  yourself  appreciating  and  sympathising 
with  my  objects. 

Particular  branches  of  zoology  have  been  cultivated  in  this 
country  with  great  success,  as  you  are  well  aware,  but  ten  years 
ago  I  do  not  believe  that  there  were  half  a  dozen  of  my  country- 
men who  had  the  slightest  comprehension  of  morphology,  and  of 
what  you  and  I  should  call  "  Wissenschaftliche  Zoologie." 

Those  who  thought  about  the  matter  at  all  took  Owen's 
osteological  extravaganzas  for  the  ne  plus  ultra  of  morphological 
speculation. 

I  learned  the  meaning  of  Morphology  and  the  value  of  de- 


i859  LETTER  TO   LEUCKART  175 

velopment  as  the  criterion  of  morphological  views — first,  from 
the  study  of  the  Hydrozoa  during  a  long  voyage,  and  secondly, 
from  the  writings  of  Von  Bar.  I  have  done  my  best,  both  by 
precept  and  practice,  to  inaugurate  better  methods  and  a  better 
spirit  than  had  long  prevailed.  Others  have  taken  the  same 
\'iews,  and  I  confidently  hope  that  a  new  epoch  for  zoology  is 
dawning  among  us.  I  do  not  cl^im  for  myself  any  great  share 
in4he  good  work,  but  I  have  not  fiinched  when  there  was  any- 
thing to  be  done. 

Under  these  circumstances  you  will  imagine  that  it  was  very 
pleasant  to  find  on  your  side  a  recognition  of  what  I  was  about. 

I  sent  you,  through  the  booksellers,  some  time  ago  a  copy  of 
my  memoir  on  Aphis.  I  find  from  Moleschott's  Untersuchungen 
that  you  must  have  been  working  at  this  subject  contemporane- 
ously with  myself,  and  it  was  very  satisfactory  to  find  so  close 
a  concordance  in  essentials  between  our  results.  Your  memoirs 
are  extremely  interesting,  and  to  some  extent  anticipated  results 
at  which  my  friend,  Mr.  Lubbock  *  (if  very  competent  worker, 
with  whose  paper  on  Daphnia  you  are  doubtless  acquainted),  had 
arrived. 

I  should  be  very  glad  to  know  what  you  think  of  my  views 
of  the  composition  of  the  articulate  head. 

I  have  been  greatly  interested  also  in  your  Memoir  on 
Pentastomum.  There  can  be  no  difficulty  about  getting  a  notice 
of  it  in  our  journals,  and,  indeed,  I  will  sec  to  it  myself.  Pray 
do  me  the  favour  to  let  me  know  whenever  I  can  serve  you  in 
this  or  other  ways. 

I  shall  do  myself  the  pleasure  of  forwarding  to  you  immedi- 
ately, through  the  booksellers,  a  lecture  of  mine  on  the  The/>ry 
of  the  Vertebrate  Skull,  which  is  just  published,  and  also  a  little 
paper  on  the  development  of  the  tail  in  fishes. 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  I  have  but  little  time  for  working  at 
these  matters  now,  as  my  position  at  the  School  of  Mines  obliges 
me  to  confine  myself  more  and  more  to  Palaeontok>gy. 

However,  I  keep  to  the  anatomical  side  of  that  w^rt  of  work. 
and  so,  now  and  then,  I  hope  to  emerge  from  amidst  the  iohhih 
with  a  bit  of  recent  anatomy. 

Just  at  present,  by  the  way,  I  am  giving  my  di^p'>sjiUe  h</urh 
to  the  completion  of  a  monograph  on  the  Calycc^^hondae  arid 
Physophoridx  observed  during  my  voyage.  71ie  IxMjk  ou^it  to 
have  been  published  eight  years  ago.    But  for  three  years  1  of/uld 

♦  The  present  Sir  John  Lubbotk,  MP. 


176  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xii 

get  no  money  from  the  Government,  and  in  the  meanwhile  you 
and  Kolliker,  Gegenbaur  and  Vogt,  went  to  the  shores  of  the 
Mediterranean  and  made  sad  havoc  with  my  novelties.  Then 
came  occupations  consequent  on  my  appointment  to  the  chair 
I  now  hold;  and  it  was  only  last  autumn  that  I  had  leisure  to 
take  up  the  subject  again. 

However,  the  plates,  which  I  hope  you  will  see  in  a  few 
months  have,  with  two  exceptions,  been  engraved  five  years. 

Pray  make  my  remembrances  to  Dr.  Eckhard.  I  was  sorry 
not  to  have  seen  him  again  in  London. — Ever,  my  dear  Sir,  very 
faithfully  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Prof.  Leuckart 

At  this  time  Sir  J.  Hooker  was  writing,  as  an  introduc- 
tion to  his  Flora  of  Tasmania,  his  essay  on  the  Fbra  of 
Australia,  published  in  1859 — a  book  which  owed  its  form 
to  the  influence  of  Darwin,  and  in  return  lent  weighty  sup- 
port to  evolutionary  theory  from  the  botanical  side.  He 
sent  his  proofs  for  Huxley  to  read. 

14  Waverley  Place,  N.W.,  April  22,  1859. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  have  read  your  proofs  with  a  great  deal 
of  attention  and  interest.  I  was  greatly  struck  with  the  sug- 
gestions in  the  first  page,  and  the  exposure  of  the  fallacy  "  that 
cultivated  forms  recur  to  wild  types  if  left  alone  "  is  new  to  me 
and  seem»  of  vast  importance. 

The  argument  brought  forward  in  the  note  is  very  striking 
and  as  simple  as  the  tgg  of  Columbus,  when  one  sees  it.  I  have 
marked  one  or  two  passages  which  are  not  quite  clear  to 
me.  .  .  . 

I  have  been  accused  of  writing  papers  composed  of  nothing 
but  heads  of  chapters,  and  I  think  you  tend  the  same  way. 
Please  take  the  trouble  to  make  the  two  lines  I  have  scored  into 
a  paragraph,  so  that  poor  devils  who  are  not  quite  so  well  up 
in  the  subject  as  yourself  may  not  have  to  rack  their  brains  for 
an  hour  to  supply  all  the  links  of  your  chain  of  argument.  .  .  . 

You  see  that  I  am  in  a  carping  humour,  but  the  matter  of 
the  essays  seems  to  me  to  be  so  very  valuable  that  I  am  jealous 
of  the  manner  of  it. 

I  had  a  long  visit  from  Greene  of  Cork  yesterday.  He  is 
very  Irish,  but  very  intelligent  and  well-informed,  and  I  am  in 
hopes  he  will  do  good  service.  He  is  writing  a  little  book  on 
the  Protozoa,  which  (so  far  as  I  have  glanced  over  the  proof 


i859  LETTERS  1 77 

sheets  as  yet)  seems  to  show  a  very  philosophical  turn  of  mind. 
It  is  very  satisfactory  to  find  the  ideas  one  has  been  fighting 
for  beginning  to  take  root. 

I  do  not  suppose  my  own  personal  contributions  to  science 
will  ever  be  anything  very  grand,  but  I  shall  be  well  content  if 
I  have  reason  to  believe  that  I  have  done  something  to  stir  up 
others. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

\        To  the  same : —  • 

j4pri/,  1859. 
My  dear  Hooker  ...  I  pity  you — as  for  the  MSS.  it  is  one 
of  those  cases  for  which  penances  were  originally  devised. 
What  do  you  say  to  standing  on  your  head  in  the  garden  for 
one  hour  per  diem  for  the  next  week  ?  It  would  be  a  relief.  .  .  . 
I  suppose  you  will  be  at  the  Phil.  Club  next  Monday.  In 
the  meanwhile  don't  let  all  the  flesh  be  worried  off  your  bones 
(there  isn't  much  as  it  is). — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

14  Waverley  Place,  July  29,  1859. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  meant  to  have  written  to  you  yester- 
day, but  things  put  it  out  of  my  head.  If  there  is  to  be  any 
fund  raised  at  all,  I  am  quite  of  your  mind  that  it  should  be  a 
scientific  fund  and  not  a  mere  naturalists'  fund.  Sectarianism 
in  such  matters  is  ridiculous,  and  besides  that,  in  this  particular 
case  it  is  bad  policy.  For  the  wo9d  "  Naturalist "  unfortunately 
includes  a  far  lower  order  of  men  than  chemist,  physicist,  or 
mathematician.  You  don't  call  a  man  a  mathematician  because 
he  has  spent  his  life  in  getting  as  far  as  quadratics ;  but  every 
fool  who  can  make  bad  species  and  worse  genera  is  a  "  Natural- 
ist"!— save  the  mark!     Imagine  the  chemists  petitioning  the 

Crown  for  a  Pension  for  P if  he  wanted  one !  and  yet  he 

really  is  a  philosopher  compared  to  poor  dear  A . 

"  Naturalists  "  therefore  are  far  more  likely  to  want  help 
than  any  other  class  of  scientific  men,  and  they  would  be  greatly 
damaging  their  own  interests  if  they  formed  an  exclusive  fund 
for  themselves. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

1859 

In  November  1859  ^he  Origin  of  Species  was  published, 
and  a  new  direction  wa^  given  to  Huxley's  activities.  Ever 
since  Darwin  and  Wallace  had  made  their  joint  communica- 
tion to  the  Linnean  Society  in  the  preceding  July,  expecta- 
tion had  been  rife  as  to  the  forthcoming  book.  Huxley 
was  one  of  the  few  privileged  to  learn  Darwin's  argument 
before  it  was  given  to  the  world ;  but  the  greatness  of  the 
book,  mere  instalment  as  it  was  of  the  long  accumulated 
mass  of  notes,  almost  took  him  by  surprise.  Before  this 
time,  he  had  taken  up  a  thoroughly  agnostic  attitude  with 
regard  to  the  species  question,  for  he  could  not  accept  the 
creational  theory,  yet  sought  in  vain  among  the  transmu- 
tationists  for  any  cause  adequate  to  produce  transmuta- 
tion. He  had  had  many  talks  with  Darwin,  and  though 
ready  enough  to  accept  the  main  point,  maintained  such  a 
critical  attitude  on  many  others,  that  Darwin  was  not  by 
any  means  certain  of  the  effect  the  published  book  would 
produce  upon  him.  Indeed,  in  his  1857  notebook,  I  find 
jotted  down  under  the  head  of  his  paper  on  Pygocephalus 
(read  at  the  Geological  Society),  "  anti-progressive  confes- 
sion of  faith."  Darwin  was  the  more  anxious,  as,  when  he 
first  put  pen  to  paper,  he  had  fixed  in  his  mind  three  judges, 
by  whose  decision  he  determined  mentally  to  abide.  These 
three  were  Lyell,  Hooker,  and  Huxley.  If  these  three  came 
round,  partly  through  the  book,  partly  through  their  own 
reflections,  he  could  feel  that  the  subject  was  safe.  "  No 
one,"  writes  Darwin  on  November  13,  "  has  read  it,  except 
Lyell,  with  whom  I  have  had  much  correspondence. 
178 


i859  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  179 

Hooker  thinks  him  a  complete  convert,  but  he  does  not 
seem  so  in  his  letters  to  me ;  but  is  evidently  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  subject."  And  again :  '*  I  think  I  told  you 
before  that  Hooker  is  a  complete  convert.  If  I  can  con- 
vert Huxley  I  shall  be  content."    {Life^  vol.  ii.  p.  221.) 

On  all  three,  the  effect  of  the  book  itself,  with  its  de- 
tailed arguments  and  overwhelming  array  of  evidence,  was 
far  greater  than  that  of  previous  discussions.  With  one  or 
two  reservations  as  to  the  logical  completeness  of  the  theory, 
Huxley  accepted  it  as  a  well-founded  working  hypothesis, 
calculated  to  explain  problems  otherwise  inexplicable. 

Two  extracts  from  the  chapter  he  contributed  to  the 
Life  of  Darwin  show  very  clearly  his  attitude  of  mind  when 
the  Origin  of  Species  was  first  published: — 

Extract  from  "  The  Reception  of  the  *  Origin  of  Species ' "  in 
Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  vol.  ii.  pp.  187-90  and 
195-97. 

I  think  I  must  have  read  the  Vestiges  before  I  left  England 
in  1846;  but,  if  I  did,  the  book  made  very  little  impression  upon 
me,  and  I  was  not  brought  into  serious  contact  with  the 
**  Species  "  question  until  after  1850.  At  that  time,  I  had  long 
done  with  the  Pentateuchal  cosmogony,  which  had  been  im- 
pressed upon  my  childish  understanding  as  Divine  truth,  with 
all  the  authority  of  parents  and  instructors,  and  from  which  it 
had  cost  me  many  a  struggle  to  get  free.  But  my  mind  was 
unbiassed  in  respect  of  any  doctrine  which  presented  itself,  if  it 
professed  to  be  based  on  purely  philosophical  and  scientific  rea- 
soning. It  seemed  to  me  then  (as  it  does  now)  that  "  creation,'* 
in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word,  is  perfectly  conceivable.  I 
find  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  that,  at  some  former  period,  tliis 
universe  was  not  in  existence;  and  that  it  made  its  appearance 
in  six  days  (or  instantaneously,  if  that  is  preferred),  in  conse- 
quence of  the  volition  of  some  pre-existing  Being.  Then,  as 
now,  the  so-called  a  priori  arguments  against  Theism,  and,  given 
a  Deity,  against  the  possibility  of  creative  acts,  appeared  to  me 
to  be  devoid  of  reasonable  foundation.  I  had  not  then,  and  I 
have  not  now,  the  smallest  a  priori  objection  to  raise  to  the 
account  of  the  creation  of  animals  and  plants  given  in  Paradise 
Lost,  in  which  Milton  so  vividly  embodies  the  natural  sense  of 
Genesis.    Far  be  it  from  me  to  say  that  it  is  untrue  because  it 


l8o  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xih 

is  impossible.  I  confine  myself  to  what  must  be  regarded  as 
a  modest  and  reasonable  request  for  some  particle  of  evidence 
that  the  existing  species  of  animals  and  plants  did  originate  in 
that  way,  as  a  condition  of  my  belief  in  a  statement  which 
appears  to  me  to  be  highly  improbable. 

And,  by  way  of  being  perfectly  fair,  I  had  exactly  the  same 
answer  to  give  to  the  evolutionists  of  1851-58.  Within  the 
ranks  of  the  biologists,  at  that  time,  I  met  with  nobody,  except 
Dr.  Grant  of  University  College,  who  had  a  word  to  say  for 
Evolution — and  his  advocacy  was  not  calculated  to  advance  the 
cause.  Outside  these  ranks,  the  only  person  known  to  me  whose 
knowledge  and  capacity  compelled  respect,  and  who  was,  at  the 
same  time,  a  thorough-going  evolutionist,  was  Mr.  Herbert 
Spencer,  whose  acquaintance  I  made,  I  think,  in  1852,  and  then 
entered  into  the  bonds  of  a  friendship  which,  I  am  happy  to 
think,  has  known  no  interruption.  Many  and  prolonged  were 
the  battles  we  fought  on  this  topic.  But  even  my  friend's  rare 
dialectic  skill  and  copiousness  of  apt  illustration  could  not  drive 
me  from  my  agnostic  position.  I  took  my  stand  upon  two 
grounds: — Firstly,  that  up  to  that  time,  the  evidence  in  favour 
of  transmutation  was  wholly  insufficient;  and  secondly,  that  no 
suggestion  respecting  the  causes  of  transmutation  assumed, 
which  had  been  made,  was  in  any  way  adequate  to  explain  the 
phenomena.  Looking  back  at  the  state  of  knowledge  at  that 
time,  I  really  do  not  see  that  any  other  conclusion  was  justi- 
fiable. 

In  those  days  I  had  never  even  heard  of  Treviranus'  Biolo- 
gie.  However,  I  had  studied  Lamarck  attentively,  and  I  had 
read  the  Vestiges  with  due  care;  but  neither  of  them  afforded 
me  any  good  ground  for  changing  my  negative  and  critical  atti- 
tude. As  for  the  Vestiges,  I  confess  that  the  book  simply  irri- 
tated me  by  the  prodigious  ignorance  and  thoroughly  unscientific 
habit  of  mind  manifested  by  the  writer.  If  it  had  any  influence 
on  me  at  all,  it  set  me  against  Evolution ;  and  the  only  review  I 
ever  have  qualms  of  conscience  about,  on  the  ground  of  need- 
less savagery,  is  one  I  wrote  on  the  Vestiges  while  under  that 
influence.  .  .  . 

But,  by  a  curious  irony  of  fate,  the  same  influence  which  led 
me  to  put  as  little  faith  in  modem  speculations  on  this  subject  as 
in  the  venerable  traditions  recorded  in  the  first  two  chapters  of 
Genesis,  was  perhaps  more  potent  than  any  other  in  keeping 
alive  a  sort  of  pious  conviction  that  Evolution,  after  all,  would 
turn  out  true.    I  have  recently  read  afresh  the  first  edition  of 


i859       PUBLICATION   OF   THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES       \%\ 

the  Principles  of  Geology;  and  when  I  consider  that  this  re- 
markable book  had  been  nearly  thirty  years  in  everybody's  hands, 
and  that  it  brings  home  to  any  reader  of  ordinary  intelligence 
a  g^eat  principle  and  a  great  fact, — the  principle  that  the  past 
must  be  explained  by  the  present,  unless  good  cause  be  shown 
to  the  contrary;  and  the  fact  that  so  far  as  our  knowledge  of 
the  past  history  of  life  on  our  globe  goes,  no  such  cause  can  be 
shown, — I  cannot  but  believe  that  Lyell,  for  others,  as  for  my- 
self, was  the  chief  agent  in  smoothing  the  road  for  Darwin.  For 
consistent  uniformitarianism  postulates  Evolution  as  much  in 
the  organic  as  in  the  inorganic  world.  The  origin  of  a  new 
species  by  other  than  ordinary  agencies  would  be  a  vastly 
greater  "  catastrophe  "  than  any  of  those  which  Lyell  success- 
fully eliminated  from  sober  geological  speculation. 

Thus,  looking  back  into  the  past,  it  seems  to  me  that  my  own 
position  of  critical  expectancy  was  just  and  reasonable,  and 
must  have  been  taken  up,  on  the  same  grounds,  by  many  other 
persons.  If  Agassiz  told  me  that  the  forms  of  life  which  have 
successively  tenanted  the  globe  were  the  incarnations  of  succes- 
sive thoughts  of  the  Deity,  and  that  He  had  wiped  out  one  set 
of  these  embodiments  by  an  appalling  geological  catastrophe 
as  soon  as  His  ideas  took  a  more  advanced  shape,  I  found  myself 
not  only  unable  to  admit  the  accuracy  of  the  deductions  from 
the  facts  of  paleontology,  upon  which  this  astounding  hypoth- 
esis was  founded,  but  I  had  to  confess  my  want  of  any  means 
of  testing  the  correctness  of  his  explanation  of  them.  And 
besides  that,  I  could  by  no  means  see  what  the  explanation  ex- 
plained. Neither  did  it  help  me  to  be  told  by  an  eminent 
anatomist  that  species  had  succeeded  one  another  in  time,  in 
virtue  of  "a  continuously  operative  creational  law."  That 
seemed  to  me  to  be  no  more  than  saying  that  species  had  succeed- 
ed one  another  in  the  form  of  a  vote-catching  resolution,  with 
"  law  "  to  catch  the  man  of  science,  and  "  creational "  to  draw 
the  orthodox.  So  I  took  refuge  in  that  "  thatige  Skepsis  "  which 
Goethe  has  so  well  defined;  and,  reversing  the  apostolic  precept 
to  be  all  things  to  all  men,  I  usually  defended  the  tenability  of 
the  received  doctrines  when  I  had  to  do  with  the  transmuta- 
tionist ;  and  stood  up  for  die  possibility  of  transmutation  among 
the  orthodox — thereby,  no  doubt,  increasing  an  already  current, 
but  quite  undeserved,  reputation  for  needless  combativeness. 

I  remember,  in  the  course  of  my  first  interview  with  Mr. 
Darwin,  expressing  my  belief  in  the  sharpness  of  the  lines  of 
demarcation  between  natural  groups  and  in  the  absence  of 


1 82  LIFE   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xiii 

transitional  forms,  with  all  the  confidence  of  youth  and  imper- 
fect knowledge.  I  was  not  aware,  at  that  time,  that  he  had  then 
been  many  years  brooding  over  the  species-question;  and  the 
humorous  smile  which  accompanied  his  gentle  answer,  that  such 
was  not  altogether  his  view,  long  haunted  and  puzzled  me.  But 
it  would  seem  that  four  or  five  years'  hard  work  had  enabled 
me  to  understand  what  it  meant;  for  Lyell,  writing  to  Sir 
Charles  Bunbury  (under  date  of  April  30,  1856),  says: — 

"  When  Huxley,  Hooker  and  WoUaston  were  at  Darwin's 
last  week,  they  (all  four  of  them)  ran  a  tilt  against  species — 
further,  I  believe,  than  they  are  prepared  to  go." 

I  recollect  nothing  of  this  beyond  the  fact  of  meeting  Mr. 
Wollaston;  and  except  for  Sir  Charles's  distinct  assurance  as 
to  "  all  four,"  I  should  have  thought  my  outrecuidance  was 
probably  a  counterblast  to  WoUaston's  conservatism.  With  re- 
gard to  Hooker,  he  was  already,  like  Voltaire's  Habbakuk,  capa- 
ble de  tout  in  the  way  of  advocating  Evolution. 

As  I  have  already  said,  I  imagine  that  most  of  those  of 
my  contemporaries  who  thought  seriously  about  the  matter, 
were  very  much  in  my  own  state  of  mind — inclined  to  say 
to  both  Mosaists  and  Evolutionists,  "  a  plague  on  both  your 
houses ! "  and  disposed  to  turn  aside  from  an  interminable  and 
apparently  fruitless  discussion,  to  labour  in  the  fertile  fields  of 
ascertainable  fact.  And  I  may  therefore  suppose  that  the  pub- 
lication of  the  Darwin  and  Wallace  paper  in  1858,  and  still  more 
that  of  the  "  Origin  "  in  1859,  had  the  effect  upon  them  of  the 
flash  of  light  which,  to  a  man  who  has  lost  himself  on  a  dark 
night,  suddenly  reveals  a  road  which,  whether  it  takes  him 
straight  home  or  not,  certainly  goes  his  way.  That  which  we 
were  looking  for,  and  could  not  find,  was  a  hypothesis  respect- 
ing the  origin  of  known  organic  forms  which  assumed  the  opera- 
tion of  no  causes  but  such  as  could  be  proved  to  be  actually  at 
work.  We  wanted,  not  to  pin  our  faith  to  that  or  any  other 
speculation,  but  to  get  hold  of  clear  and  definite  conceptions 
which  could  be  brought  face  to  face  with  facts  and  have  their 
validity  tested.  The  "  Origin  "  provided  us  with  the  working 
hypothesis  we  sought.  Moreover,  it  did  the  immense  service  of 
freeing  us  for  ever  from  the  dilemma — Refuse  to  accept  the 
creation  hypothesis,  and  what  have  you  to  propose  that  can  be 
accepted  by  any  cautious  reasoner?  In  1857  I  had  no  answer 
ready,  and  I  do  not  think  that  anyone  else  had.  A  year  later  we 
reproached  ourselves  with  dulness  for  being  perplexed  with  such 
an  inquiry.    My  reflection,  when  I  first  made  myself  master  of 


i859  BEACON-FIRE  OF   THE   ORIGIN  183 

the  central  idea  of  the  "Origin  "  was,  "  How  extremely  stupid 
not  to  have  thought  of  that !  "  I  suppose  that  Columbus'  com- 
panions said  much  the  same  when  he  made  the  t%%  stand  on 
end.  The  facts  of  variability,  of  the  struggle  for  existence,  of 
adaptation  to  conditions,  were  notorious  enough;  but  none  of 
us  had  suspected  that  the  road  to  the  heart  of  the  species  prob- 
lem lay  through  them,  until  Darwin  and  Wallace  dispelled  the 
darkness,  and  the  beacon-fire  of  the  "  Origin "  guided  the  be- 
nighted. 

Whether  the  particular  shape  which  the  doctrine  of  Evolu- 
tion, as  applied  to  the  organic  world,  took  in  Darwin's  hands, 
would  prove  to  be  final  or  not,  was  to  me  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence. In  my  earliest  criticisms  of  the  "  Origin  "  I  ventured  to 
point  out  that  its  logical  foundation  was  insecure  so  long  as 
experiments  in  selective  breeding  had  not  produced  varieties 
which  were  more  or  less  infertile;  and  that  insecurity  remains 
up  to  the  present  time.  But,  with  any  and  every  critical  doubt 
which  my  sceptical  ingenuity  could  suggest,  the  Darwinian 
hypothesis  remained  incomparably  more  probable  than  the  cre- 
ation hypothesis.  And  if  we  had  none  of  us  been  able  to  dis- 
cern the  paramount  significance  of  some  of  the  most  patent 
and  notorious  of  natural  facts,  until  they  were,  so  to  speak, 
thrust  under  our  noses,  what  force  remained  in  the  dilemma — 
creation  or  nothing?  It  was  obvious  that  hereafter  the  proba- 
bility would  be  immensely  greater,  that  the  links  of  natural 
causation  were  hidden  from  our  purblind  eyes,  than  that  natural 
causation  should  be  incompetent  to  produce  all  the  phenomena 
of  nature*  The  only  rational  course  for  those  who  had  no  other 
object  than  the  attainment  of  truth  was  to  accept  "  Darwinism  " 
as  a  working  hypothesis  and  see  what  could  be  made  of  it. 
Either  it  would  prove  its  capacity  to  elucidate  the  facts  of 
organic  life,  or  it  would  break  down  under  the  strain.  This 
was  surely  the  dictate  of  common  sense,  and,  for  once,  common 
sense  carried  the  day. 

Even  before  the  "  Origin  "  actually  came  out,  Huxley 
had  begun  to  act  as  what  Darwin  afterwards  called  his  "  gen- 
eral agent"  He  began  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  accept- 
ance of  the  theory  of  evolution  by  discussing,  for  instance, 
one  of  the  most  obvious  difficulties,  namely,  How  is  it  that 
if  evolution  is  ever  progressive,  progress  is  not  universal? 
It  was  a  point  with  respect  to  which  Darwin  himself  wrote 
soon  after  the  publication  of  the  "  Origin  " : — "  Judging 
13 


1 84  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xiii 

from  letters  .  .  .  and  from  remarks,  the  most  serious  omis- 
sion in  my  book  was  not  explaining  how  it  is,  as  I  believe, 
that  all  forms  do  not  necessarily  advance,  how  there  can 
now  be  simple  organisms  existing."    (May  22,  i860.) 

Huxley's  idea,  then,  was  to  call  attention  to  the  persist- 
ence of  many  types  without  appreciable  progression  during 
geological  time ;  to  show  that  this  fact  was  not  explicable 
on  any  other  hypothesis  than  that  put  forward  by  Darwin ; 
and  by  paleontological  arguments,  to  pave  the  way  for  con- 
sideration of  the  imperfection  of  the  geological  record. 

Such  were  the  lines  on  which  he  delivered  his  Friday 
evening  lecture  on  "  Persistent  Types  "  at  the  Royal  Insti- 
tution on  June  3,  1859. 

However,  the  chief  part  which  he  took  at  this  time  in 
extending  the  doctrines  of  evolution  was  in  applying  them 
to  his  own  subjects.  Development  and  Vertebrate  Anatomy, 
and  more  particularly  to  the  question  of  the  origin  of 
mankind. 

Of  all  the  burning  questions  connected  with  the  Origin 
of  Species,  this  was  the  most  heated — the  most  surrounded 
by  prejudice  and  passion.  To  touch  it  was  to  court  attack ; 
to  be  exposed  to  endless  scorn,  ridicule,  misrepresentation, 
abuse — almost  to  social  ostracism.  But  the  facts  were  there ; 
the  structural  likenesses  between  the  apes  and  man  had 
already  been  shown ;  and  as  Huxley  warned  Darwin,  "  I 
will  stop  at  no  point  so  long  as  clear  reasoning  will  carry 
me  f>irrther." 

Now  two  years  before  the  "  Origin ''  appeared,  the  denial 
of  these  facts  by  a  leading  anatomist  led  Huxley,  as  was  his 
wont,  to  re-investigate  the  question  for  himself  and  satisfy 
himself  one  way  or  the  other.  He  found  that  the  previous 
investigators  were  not  mistaken.  Without  going  out  of  his 
way  to  refute  the  mis-statement  as  publicly  as  it  was  made, 
he  simply  embodied  his  results  in  his  regular  teaching.  But 
the  opportunity  came  unsought.  Fortified  by  his  own  re- 
searches, he  openly  challenged  these  assertions  when  re- 
peated at  the  Oxford  meeting  of  the  British  Association  in 
i860,  and  promised  to  make  good  his  challenge  in  the 
proper  place. 


1859  LETTER   TO   LYELL  185 

We  also  find  him  combating  some  of  the  difficulties  in 
the  way  of  accepting  the  theory  laid  before  him  by  Sir 
Charles  Lyell.  The  veteran  geologist  had  been  Darwin's 
confidant  from  almost  the  beginning  of  his  speculations ;  he 
had  really  paved  the  way  for  the  evolutionary  doctrine  by 
his  own  proof  of  geological  uniformity,  but  he  shrank  from 
accepting  it,  for  its  inevitable  extension  to  the  descent  of 
man  was  repugnant  to  his  feelings.  Nevertheless,  he  would 
not  allow  sentiment  to  stand  in  the  way  of  truth,  and  after 
the  publication  of  the  "  Origin  "  it  could  be  said  of  him — 

Lyell,  up  to  that  time  a  pillar  of  the  anti-transmutationists 
(who  regarded  him,  ever  after,  as  Pallas  Athene  may  have 
looked  at  Dian,  after  die  Endymion  affair),  declared  himself  a 
Darwinian,  though  not  without  putting  in  a  serious  caveat. 
Nevertheless,  he  was  a  tower  of  strength,  and  his  courageous 
stand  for  truth  as  against  consistency  did  him  infinite  honour. 
— (T.  H.  H.  in  Life  of  Darwin,  vol  ii.  p.  231.) 

To  Sir  Charles  Lyell 

/une  25, 1859. 
My  dear  Sir  Charles — I  have  endeavoured  to  meet  your 
objections  in  the  enclosed. — Ever  yours,  very  truly, 

T.  H.  H. 

The  fixity  and  definite  limitation  of  species,  genera,  and 
larger  groups  appear  to  me  to  be  perfectly  consistent  with  the 
theory  of  transmutation.  In  other  words,  I  think  transmutation 
may  take  place  without  transition. 

Suppose  that  external  conditions  acting  on  species  A  give 
rise  to  a  new  species,  B ;  the  difference  between  the  two  species 
is  a  certain  definable  amount  which  may  be  called  A-B.  Now 
I  know  of  no  evidence  to  show  that  the  interval  between  the 
two  species  must  necessarily  be  bridged  over  by  a  series  of 
forms,  each  of  which  shall  occupy,  as  it  occurs,  a  fraction  of 
the  distance  between  A  and  B.  On  the  contrary,  in  the  history 
of  the  Ancon  sheep,  and  of  the  six-fingered  Maltese  family, 
given  by  Reaumur,  it  appears  that  the  new  form  appeared  at 
once  in  full  perfection. 

I  may  illustrate  what  I  mean  by  a  chemical  example.  In  an 
organic  compound,  having  a  precise  and  definite  composition, 
you  may  effect  all  sorts  of  transmutations  by  substituting  an 


1 86  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xiii 

atom  of  one  element  for  an  atom  of  another  element  You  may 
in  this  way  produce  a  vast  series  of  modifications — ^but  each 
modification  is  definite  in  its  composition,  and  there  are  no  tran- 
sitional or  intermediate  steps  between  one  definite  compound  and 
another.  I  have  a  sort  of  notion  that  similar  laws  of  definite 
combination  rule  over  the  modifications  of  organic  bodies,  and 
that  in  passing  from  species  to  species  **  Natura  fecit  saltum." 

All  my  studies  lead  me  to  believe  more  and  more  in  the 
absence  of  any  real  transitions  between  natural  groups,  g^eat 
and  small — ^but  with  what  we  know  of  the  physiology  of  con- 
ditions [  ?]  this  opinion  seems  to  me  to  be  quite  consistent  with 
transmutation. 

When  I  say  that  no  evidence,  or  hardly  any,  would  justify 
one  in  believing  in  the  view  of  a  new  species  of  Elephant,  e,g. 
out  of  the  earth,  I  mean  that  such  an  occurrence  would  be  so 
diametrically  contrary  to  all  experience,  so  opposed  to  those 
beliefs  which  are  the  most  constantly  verified  by  experience, 
that  one  would  be  justified  in  believing  either  that  one's  senses 
were  deluded,  or  that  one  had  not  really  got  to  the  bottom  of 
the  phenomenon.  Of  course,  if  one  could  vary  the  conditions, 
if  one  could  take  a  little  silex,  and  by  a  little  hocus-pocus  a  la 
crosse,  galvanise  a  baby  out  of  it  as  often  as  one  pleased,  all 
the  philosopher  could  do  would  be  to  hold  up  his  hands  and  cry, 
"  God  is  great."  But  short  of  evidence  of  this  kind,  I  don't  mean 
to  believe  an3rthing  of  the  kind. 

How  much  evidence  would  you  require  to  believe  that  there 
was  a  time  when  stones  fell  upwards,  or  granite  made  itself  by  a 
spontaneous  rearrangement  of  the  elementary  particles  of  clay 
and  sand?  And  yet  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  these  beliefs 
are  as  nothing  compared  to  those  which  you  would  have  to  over- 
come in  believing  that  complex  organic  beings  made  themselves 
(for  that  is  what  creation  comes  to  in  scientific  language)  out 
of  inorganic  matter. 

I  know  it  will  be  said  that  even  on  the  transmutation  theory, 
the  first  organic  being  must  have  made  itself.  But  there  is  as 
much  difference  between  supposing  the  passage  of  inorganic 
matter  into  an  amoeba,  e.g.,  and  into  an  Elephant,  as  there  is 
between  supposing  that  Portland  stone  might  have  built  itself 
up  into  St.  Paul's,  and  believing  that  the  Giant's  Causeway  may 
have  come  about  by  natural  causes. 

True,  one  must  believe  in  a  beginning  somewhere,  but  sci- 
ence consists  in  not  believing  the  having  reached  that  beginning 
before  one  is  forced  to  do  so. 


1859  LETTER   TO  LYELL  187 

It  is  wholly  impossible  to  prove  that  any  phenomenon  what- 
soever is  not  produced  by  the  interposition  of  some  unknown 
cause.  But  philosophy  has  prospered  exactly  as  it  has  disre- 
garded such  possibilities,  and  has  endeavoured  to  resolve  every 
event  by  ordinary  reasoning. 

I  do  not  exactly  see  the  force  of  your  argument  that  we 
are  bound  to  find  fossil  forms  intermediate  between  men  and 
monkeys  in  the  Rocks.  Crocodiles  are  the  highest  reptiles  as 
men  are  the  highest  mammals,  but  we  find  nothing  intermediate 
between  crocodilia  and  lacertilia  in  the  whole  range  of  the 
Mesozoic  rocks.  How  do  we  know  that  Man  is  not  a  persistent 
type?  And  as  for  implements,  at  this  day,  and  as,  I  suppose, 
for  the  last  two  or  three  thousand  years  at  least,  the  savages  of 
Australia  have  made  their  weapons  of  nothing  but  bone  and 
wood.  Why  should  Homo  Eocenus  or  Ooliticus,  the  fellows 
who  waddied  the  Amphitherium  and  speared  the  Phascolo- 
therium  as  the  Australian  niggers  treat  their  congeners,  have 
been  more  advanced  ? 

I  by  no  means  suppose  that  the  transmutation  hypothesis  is 
proven  or  anything  like  it  But  I  view  it  as  a  powerful  instru- 
ment of  research.  Follow  it  out,  and  it  will  lead  us  somewhere ; 
while  the  other  notion  is  like  all  the  modifications  of  "final 
causation,"  a  barren  virgin. 

And  I  would  very  strongly  urge  upon  you  that  it  is  the 
logical  development  of  Uniformitarianism,  and  that  its  adoption 
would  harmonise  the  spirit  of  Paleontology  with  that  of  Physical 
Geology. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

1859-60 

The  "  Origin  "  appeared  in  November.  As  soon  as  he 
had  read  it,  Huxley  wrote  the  following  letter  to  Darwin 
(already  published  in  Life  of  Darwin,  vol.  ii.  p.  231) : — 

Jermyn  Street,  W.,  November  23,  1859. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  finished  your  book  yesterday,  a  lucky 
examination  having  furnished  me  with  a  few  hours  of  con- 
tinuous leisure. 

Since  I  read  Von  Bar's  essays,  nine  years  ago,  no  work  on 
Natural  History  Science  I  have  met  with  has  made  so  great 
an  impression  upon  me,  and  I  do  most  heartily  thank  you  for 
the  great  store  of  new  views  you  have  given  me.  Nothing,  I 
think,  can  be  better  than  the  tone  of  the  book ;  it  impresses  those 
who  know  about  the  subject  As  for  your  doctrine,  I  am  pre- 
pared to  go  to  the  stake,  if  requisite,  in  support  of  Chapter  IX  * 
and  most  parts  of  Chapters  X,  XI,  XII,  and  Chapter  XIII  con- 
tains much  that  is  most  admirable,  but  on  one  or  two  points  I 
enter  a  caveat  until  I  can  see  further  into  all  sides  of  the 
question. 

As  to  the  first  four  chapters.f  I  agree  thoroughly  and  fully 
with  all  the  principles  laid  down  in  them.  I  think  you  have 
demonstrated  a  true  cause  for  the  production  of  species,  and 
have  thrown  the  onus  probandi,  that  species  did  not  arise  in 
the  way  you  suppose,  on  your  adversaries. 

*  Chapter  IX,  The  Imperfection  of  the  Geological  Record  ;  X,  The 
Geological  Succession  of  Organic  Beings ;  XI-XII,  Geographical  Dis- 
tribution ;  XIII,  Classification,  Morphology,  Embryology,  and  Rudi- 
mentary Organs. 

f  Chapter  I,  Variation  under  Domestication ;  II,  Variation  under 
Nature ;  III,  The  Struggle  for  Existence ;  IV,  Operation  of  Natural 
Selection  ;  V,  Laws  of  Variation. 
188 


1859  THE   TIMES  REVIEW  OF  THE  ORIGIN  189 

But  I  feel  that  I  have  not  yet  by  any  means  fully  realised 
the  bearings  of  those  most  remarkable  and  original  Chapters 
— Ill,  IV,  and  V,  and  I  will  write  no  more  about  them  just  now. 

The  only  objections  that  have  occurred  to  me  are — ist,  That 
you  have  loaded  yourself  with  an  unnecessary  difficulty  in  adopt- 
ing Natura  non  facit  saltufn  so  unreservedly ;  and  2nd,  It  is  not 
clear  to  me  why,  if  continual  physical  conditions  are  of  so  little 
moment  as  you  suppose,  variation  should  occur  at  all. 

However,  I  must  read  the  book  two  or  three  times  more 
before  I  presume  to  begin  picking  holes. 

I  trust  you  will  not  allow  yourself  to  be  in  any  way  disgusted 
or  annoyed  by  the  considerable  abuse  and  misrepresentation 
which,  unless  I  greatly  mistake,  is  in  store  for  you.  Depend 
upon  it,  you  have  earned  the  lasting  gratitude  of  all  thoughtful 
men.  And  as  to  the  curs  which  will  bark  and  yelp,  you  must 
recollect  that  some  of  your  friends,  at  any  rate,  are  endowed 
with  an  amount  of  combativeness  which  (though  you  have  often 
and  justly  rebuked  it)  may  stand  you  in  good  stead. 

I  am  sharpening  up  my  claws  and  beak  in  readiness. 

Looking  back  over  my  letter,  it  really  expresses  so  feebly  all 
I  think  about  you  and  your  noble  book,  that  I  am  half-ashamed 
of  it ;  but  you  will  understand  that,  like  the  parrot  in  the  story, 
"  I  think  the  more." — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

A  month  later,  fortune  put  into  his  hands  the  oppor- 
tunity of  striking  a  vigorous  and  telling  blow  for  the  newly- 
published  book.  Never  was  windfall  more  eagerly  accepted. 
A  short  account  of  this  lucky  chance  was  written  by  him 
for  the  Darwin  Life  (vol.  i.  p.  255). 

The  "  Origin  "  was  sent  to  Mr.  Lucas,  one  of  the  staff  of  the 
Times  writers  at  that  day,  in  what  was  I  suppose  the  ordinary 
course  of  business.  Mr.  Lucas,  though  an  excellent  journalist, 
and  at  a  later  period,  editor  of  Once  a  Week,  was  as  innocent 
of  any  knowledge  of  science  as  a  babe,  and  bewailed  himself 
to  an  acquaintance  on  having  to  deal  with  such  a  book.  Where- 
upon, he  was  recommended  to  ask  me  to  get  him  out  of  his 
difficulty,  and  he  applied  to  me  accordingly,  explaining,  how- 
ever, that  it  would  be  necessary  for  him  formally  to  adopt  any- 
thing I  might  be  disposed  to  write,  by  prefacing  it  with  two 
or  three  paragraphs  of  his  own. 

I  was  too  anxious  to  seize  upon  the  opportunity  thus  offered 


190 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xiv 


of  giving  the  book  a  fair  chance  with  the  multitudinous  readers 
of  the  Times,  to  make  any  difficulty  about  conditions ;  and  being 
then  very  full  of  the  subject,  I  wrote  the  article  faster,  I  think, 
than  I  ever  wrote  anything  in  my  life,  and  sent  it  to  Mr.  Lucas, 
who  duly  prefixed  his  opening  sentences. 

When  the  article  appeared,  there  was  much  speculation  as 
to  its  authorship.  The  secret  leaked  out  in  time,  as  all  secrets 
will,  but  not  by  my  aid ;  and  then  I  used  to  derive  a  good  deal  of 
innocent  amusement  from  the  vehement  assertions  of  some  of 
my  more  acute  friends,  that  they  knew  it  was  mine  from  the  first 
paragraph ! 

As  the  Times  some  years  since,  referred  to  my  connection 
with  the  review,  I  suppose  there  will  be  no  breach  of  confidence 
in  the  publication  of  this  little  history,  if  you  think  it  worth  the 
space  it  will  occupy. 

The  article  appeared  on  December  26.  Only  Hooker 
was  admitted  into  the  secret.  In  an  undated  note  Huxley 
writes  to  him : — 

I  have  written  the  other  review  you  wot  of,  and  have  handed 
it  over  to  my  friend  to  deal  as  he  likes  with  it  .  .  .  Darwin  will 
laugh  over  a  letter  that  I  sent  him  this  morning  with  a  vignette 
of  the  Jermyn  Street  "  pet "  ready  to  fight  his  battle,  and  the 
"  judicious  Hooker  "  holding  the  bottle. 

And  on  December  31  he  writes  again : — 

Jermyn  Street,  December  31,  1859. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  have  not  the  least  objection  to  my 
share  in  the  Times  article  being  known,  only  I  should  not  like  to 
have  anything  stated  on  my  authority.  The  fact  is,  that  the  first 
quarter  of  the  first  column  (down  to  "  what  is  a  species,"  etc.)  is 
not  mine,  but  belongs  to  the  man  who  is  the  official  reviewer  for 
the  Times  (my  "  Temporal "  godfather  I  might  call  him). 

The  rest  is  in  my  ipsissima  verba,  and  I  only  wonder  that  it 
turns  out  as  well  as  it  does — for  I  wrote  it  faster  than  ever  I 
wrote  anything  in  my  life.  The  last  column  nearly  as  fast  as 
my  wife  could  read  the  sheets.  But  I  was  thoroughly  in  the 
humour  and  full  of  the  subject.  Of  course  as  a  scientific  review 
the  thing  is  worth  nothing,  but  I  earnestly  hope  it  may  have 
made  some  of  the  educated  mob,  who  derive  their  ideas  from 
the  Times,  reflect.  And  whatever  they  do,  they  shall  respect 
Darwin. 

Pray  give  my  kindest  regards  and  best  wishes  for  the  New 


i860  MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE 


191 


Year  to  Mrs.  Hooker,  and  tell  her  that  if  she,  of  her  own  natural 
sagacity  and  knowledge  of  the  naughtiness  of  my  heart,  affirms 
that  I  wrote  the  article,  I  shall  not  contradict  her — ^but  that  for 
reasons  of  state — I  must  not  be  supposed  to  say  anything.  I  am 
pretty  certain  the  Saturday  article  was  not  written  by  Owen. 
On  internal  grounds,  because  no  word  in  it  exceeds  an  inch  in 
length;  on  external,  from  what  Cook  said  to  me.  The  article 
is  weak  enough  and  one-sided  enough,  but  looking  at  the  various 
forces  in  action,  I  think  Cook  has  fully  redeemed  his  promise 
to  me. 

I  went  down  to  Sir  P.  Egerton  on  Tuesday — was  ill  when  I 
started,  got  worse  and  had  to  come  back  on  Thursday.  I  am  all 
adrift  now,  but  I  couldn't  stand  being  in  the  house  any  longer. 
I  wish  I  had  been  born  an  an-hepatous  foetus. 

All  sorts  of  good  wishes  to  you,  and  may  you  and  I  and 
Tyndalides,  and  one  or  two  more  bricks,  be  in  as  good  fighting 
order  in  1S61  as  in  i860. — Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Speaking  of  this  period  and  the  half-dozen  preceding 
years,  in  his  1894  preface  to  Man's  Place  in  Nature  he 
says : — 

Among  the  many  problems  which  came  under  my  considera- 
tion, the  position  of  the  human  species  in  zoological  classifica- 
tion was  one  of  the  most  serious.  Indeed,  at  that  time  it  was  a 
burning  question  in  the  sense  that  those  who  touched  it  were 
almost  certain  to  burn  their  fingers  severely.  It  was  not  so 
very  loiig  since  my  kind  friend.  Sir  William  J-awrence,  one  of 
the  ablest  men  whom  I  have  known,  had  been  well-nigh  ostra- 
cised for  his  book  On  Man,  which  now  might  be  read  in  a  Sun- 
day school  without  surprising  anybody ;  it  was  only  a  few  years 
since  the  electors  to  the  chair  of  Natural  History  in  a  famous 
northern  university  had  refused  to  invite  a  very  distinguished 
man  to  occupy  it  because  he  advocated  the  doctrine  of  the  diver- 
sity of  species  of  mankind,  or  what  was  called  "polygeny." 
Even  among  those  who  considered  man  from  the  point  of  view, 
not  of  vulgar  prejudice,  but  of  science,  opinions  lay  poles 
asunder.  Linnaeus  had  taken  one  view,  Cuvier  another;  and 
among  my  senior  contemporaries,  men  like  Lyell,  regarded  by 
many  as  revolutionaries  of  the  deepest  dye,  were  strongly  op- 
posed to  anything  which  tended  to  break  down  the  barrier  be- 
tween man  and  the  rest  of  the  animal  world. 

My  own  mind  was  by  no  means  definitely  made  up  about  this 


192  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xiv 

matter  when,  in  the  year  1857,  ^  paper  was  read  before  the 
Linnxan  Society  "  On  the  Characters,  Principles  of  Division 
and  Primary  Groups  of  the  Class  Mammalia/'  in  which  certain 
anatomical  features  of  the  brain  were  said  to  be  "peculiar  to 
the  genus  '  Homo/  "  and  were  made  the  chief  ground  for  sepa- 
rating that  genus  from  all  other  mammals  and  placing  him  in 
a  division,  "  Archencephala,"  apart  from,  and  superior  to,  all 
the  rest.  As  these  statements  did  not  agree  with  the  opinions 
I  had  formed,  I  set  to  work  to  reinvestigate  the  subject;  and 
soon  satisfied  myself  that  the  structures  in  question  were  not 
peculiar  to  Man,  but  were  shared  by  him  with  all  the  higher 
and  many  of  the  lower  apes.  I  embarked  in  no  public  discus- 
sion of  these  matters,  but  my  attention  being  thus  drawn  to 
them,  I  studied  the  whole  question  of  the  structural  relations 
of  Man  to  the  next  lower  existing  forms,  with  much  care.  And, 
of  course,  I  embodied  my  conclusions  in  my  teaching. 

Matters  were  at  this  point  when  the  Origin  of  Species  ap- 
peared. The  weighty  sentence,  "Light  will  be  thrown  on  the 
origin  of  man  and  his  history"  (ist  edition,  p.  488),  was  not 
only  in  full  harmony  with  the  conclusions  at  which  I  had  arrived 
respecting  the  structural  relations  of  apes  and  men,  but  was 
strongly  supported  by  them.  And  inasmuch  as  Development 
and  Vertebrate  Anatomy  were  not  among  Mr.  Darwin's  many 
specialities,  it  appeared  to  me  that  I  should  not  be  intruding 
on  the  ground  he  had  made  his  own,  if  I  discussed  this  part 
of  the  general  question.  In  fact,  I  thought  that  I  might  prob- 
ably serve  the  cause  of  Evolution  by  doing  so. 

Some  experience  of  popular  lecturing  had  convinced  me  that 
the  necessity  of  making  things  clear  to  uninstructed  people  was 
one  of  the  very  best  means  of  clearing  up  the  obscure  comers 
in  one's  own  mind.  So,  in  i860,  I  took  the  Relation  of  Man  to 
the  Lower  Animals  for  the  subject  of  the  six  lectures  to  work- 
ing men  which  it  was  my  duty  to  deliver.  It  was  also  in  i860 
that  this  topic  was  discussed  before  a  jury  of  experts  at  the 
meeting  of  the  British  Association  at  Oxford,  and  from  that 
time  a  sort  of  running  fight  on  the  same  subject  was  carried  on, 
until  it  culminated  at  the  Cambridge  Meeting  of  the  Association 
in  1862,  by  my  friend  Sir  W.  Flower's  public  demonstration  of 
the  existence  in  the  apes  of  those  cerebral  characters  which  had 
been  said  to  be  peculiar  to  man. 

The  famous  Oxford  Meeting  of  i860  was  of  no  small 
importance  in  Huxley's  career.    It  was  not  merely  that  he 


i860  the  oxford  MEETING  OF   i860  193 

helped  to  save  a  great  cause  from  being  stifled  under  mis- 
representation and  ridicule — that  he  helped  to  extort  for  it  a 
fair  hearing ;  it  was  now  that  he  first  made  himself  known  in 
popular  estimation  as  a  dangerous  adversary  in  debate — a 
personal  force  in  the  world  of  science  which  could  not  be 
neglected.  From  this  moment  he  entered  the  front  fighting 
line  in  the  most  exposed  quarter  of  the  field. 

Most  unluckily,  no  contemporary  account  of  his  own 
exists  of  the  encounter.  Indeed,  the  same  cause  which 
prevented  his  writing  home  the  story  of  the  day's  work 
nearly  led  to  his  absence  from  the  scene.  It  was  known 
that  Bishop  Wilberforce,  whose  first  class  in  mathematics 
gave  him,  in  popular  estimation,  a  right  to  treat  on  scientific 
matters,  intended  to  "  smash  Darwin  " ;  and  Huxley,  ex- 
pecting that  the  promised  debate  would  be  merely  an  appeal 
to  prejudice  in  a  mixed  audience,  before  which  the  scientific 
arguments  of  the  Bishop's  opponents  would  be  at  the  utmost 
disadvantage,  intended  to  leave  Oxford  that  very  morning 
and  join  his  wife  at  Hardwicke,  near  Reading,  where  she  was 
staying  with  her  sister.  But  in  a  letter,  quoted  below,  he 
tells  how,  on  the  Friday  afternoon,  he  chanced  to  meet 
Robert  Chambers,  the  reputed  author  of  the  Vestiges  of 
Creation,  who  begged  him  "  not  to  desert  them."  Accord- 
ingly he  postponed  his  departure ;  but  seeing  his  wife  next 
morning,  had  no  occasion  to  write  a  letter. 

Several  accounts  of  the  scene  are  already  in  existence : 
one  in  the  Life  of  Darwin  (vol.  ii.  p.  320),  another  in  the 
1892  Life,  p.  236  sq. ;  a  third  that  of  Lyell  '(vol.  ii.  p.  335), 
the  slight  differences  between  them  representing  the  differ- 
ence between  individual  recollections  of  eye-witnesses.  In 
addition  to  these  I  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  secure 
further  reminiscences  from  several  other  eye-witnesses. 

Two  papers  in  Section  D,  of  no  great  importance  in 
themselves,  became  historical  as  affording  the  opponents  of 
Darwin  their  opportunity  of  making  an  attack  upon  his 
theory  which  should  tell  with  the  public.  The  first  was  on 
Thursday,  June  28.  Dr.  Daubeny  of  Oxford  made  a  com- 
munication to  the  Section,  "  On  the  final  causes  of  the  sex- 
uality of  plants,  with  particular  reference  to  Mr.  Darwin's 


194  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xiv 

work  on  the  Origin  of  Species,"  *  Huxley  was  called  upon 
to  speak  by  the  President,  but  tried  to  avoid  a  discussion, 
on  the  ground  "that  a  general  audience,  in  which  senti- 
ment would  unduly  interfere  with  intellect,  was  not  the 
public  before  which  such  a  discussion  should  be  carried  on." 

This  consideration,  however,  did  not  stop  the  discussion ; 
it  was  continued  by  Owen.  He  said  he  "  wished  to  ap- 
proach the  subject  in  the  spirit  of  the  philosopher,"  and 
declared  his  "  conviction  that  there  were  facts  by  which  the 
public  could  come  to  some  conclusion  with  regard  to  the 
probabilities  of  the  truth  of  Mr.  Darwin's  theory."  As 
one  of  these  facts,  he  stated  that  the  brain  of  the  gorilla 
"  presented  more  differences,  as  compared  with  the  brain  of 
man,  than  it  did  when  compared  with  the  brains  of  the  very 
lowest  and  most  problematical  of  the  Quadrumana." 

Now  this  was  the  very  point,  as  said  above,  upon  which 
Huxley  had  made  special  investigations  during  the  last  two 
years,  with  precisely  opposite  results,  such  as,  indeed,  had 
been  arrived  at  by  previous  investigators.  Hereupon  he 
replied,  giving  these  assertions  a  "  direct  and  unqualified 
contradiction,"  and  pledging  himself  to  "justify  that  un- 
usual procedure  elsewhere," — ^  pledge  which  was  amply 
fulfilled  in  the  pages  of  the  Natural  History  Review  for 
1861.      ^ 

Accordingly  it  was  to  him,  thus  marked  out  as  the 
champion  of  the  most  debatable  thesis  of  evolution,  that, 
two  days  later,  the  Bishop  addressed  his  sarcasms,  only  to 
meet  with  a  withering  retort.  For  on  the  Friday  there  was 
peace;  but  on  the  Saturday  came  a  yet  fiercer  battle  over 
the  "  Origin,"  which  loomed  all  the  larger  in  the  public  eye, 
because  it  was  not  merely  the  contradiction  of  one  anatomist 
by  another,  but  the  open  clash  between  Science  and  the 
Church.  It  was,  moreover,  not  a  contest  of  bare  bact  or 
abstract  assertion,  but  a  combat  of  wit  between  two  indi- 
viduals, spiced  with  the  personal  element  which  appeals  to 
one  of  the  strongest  instincts  of  every  large  audience. 

*  My  best  thanks  are  due  to  Mr.  F.  Darwin  for  permission  to  quote 
his  accounts  of  the  meeting ;  other  citations  are  from  the  Athemeum 
reports  of  July  14,  i860. 


i£6o  THE  OXFORD   MEETING  OF   i860 


195 


It  was  the  merest  chance,  as  I  have  already  said,  that 
Huxley  attended  the  meeting  of  the  section  that  morning. 
Dr.  Draper  of  New  York  was  to  read  a  paper  on  the  "  In- 
tellectual Development  of  Europe  considered  with  refer- 
ence to  the  views  of  Mr.  Darwin."  "  I  can  still  hear,"  writes 
one  who  was  present,  "  the  American  accents  of  Dr.  Draper's 
opening  address  when  he  asked  '  Air  we  a  fortuitous  con- 
course of  atoms  ? ' "  However,  it  was  not  to  hear  him,  but 
the  eloquence  of  the  Bishop,  that  the  members  of  the  Asso- 
ciation crowded  in  such  numbers  into  the  Lecture  Room 
of  the  Museum,  that  this,  the  appointed  meeting-place  of 
the  section,  had  to  be  abandoned  for  the  long  west  room, 
since  cut  in  two  by  a  partition  for  the  purposes  of  the 
library.  It  was  not  term  time,  nor  were  the  general  public 
admitted ;  nevertheless  the  room  was  crowded  to  suffocation 
long  before  the  protagonists  appeared  on  the  scene,  700 
persons  or  more  managing  to  find  places.  The  very  win- 
dows by  which  the  room  was  lighted  down  the  length  of 
its  west  side  were  packed  with  ladies,  whose  white  handker- 
chiefs, waving  and  fluttering  in  the  air  at  the  end  of  the 
Bishop's  speech,  were  an  unforgettable  factor  in  the  accla- 
mation of  the  crowd. 

On  the  east  side  between  the  two  doors  was  the  plat- 
form. Professor  Henslow,  the  President  of  the  section,  took 
his  seat  in  the  centre;  upon  his  right  was  the  Bishop,  and 
beyond  him  again  Dr.  Draper;  on  his  extreme  left  was  Mr. 
Dingle,  a  clergyman  from  Lanchester,  near  Durham,  with 
Sir  J.  Hooker  and  Sir  J.  Lubbock  in  front  of  him,  and 
nearer  the  centre,  Professor  Beale  of  King's  College,  Lon- 
don, and  Huxley. 

The  clergy,  who  shouted  lustily  for  the  Bishop,  were 
massed  in  the  middle  of  the  room;  behind  them  in  the 
north-west  corner  a  knot  of  undergraduates  (one  of  these 
was  T.  H.  Green,  who  listened  but  took  no  part  in  the 
cheering)  had  gathered  together  beside  Professor  Brodie, 
ready  to  lift  their  voices,  poor  minority  though  they  were, 
for  the  opposite  party.  Close  to  them  stood  one  of  the 
few  men  among  the  audience  already  in  Holy  orders,  who 
joined  in — and  indeed  led — the  cheers  for  the  Darwinians. 


196  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xiv 

So  "  Dr.  Draper  droned  out  his  paper,  turning  first  to 
the  right  hand  and  then  to  the  left,  of  course  bringing  in  a 
reference  to  the  Origin  of  Species  which  set  the  ball  roll- 
ing." 

An  hour  or  more  that  paper  lasted,  and  then  discus- 
sion began.  The  President  "  wisely  announced  in  limine 
that  none  who  had  not  valid  arguments  to  bring  forward  on 
one  side  or  the  other  would  be  allowed  to  address  the  meet- 
ing ;  a  caution  that  proved  necessary,  for  no  fewer  than  four . 
combatants  had  their  utterances  burked  by  him,  because  of 
their  indulgence  in  vague  declamation."  * 

First  spoke  (writes  Professor  Farrarf)  a  layman  from 
Brompton,  who  gave  his  name  as  being  one  of  the  Committee 
of  the  (newly  formed)  Economic  section  of  the  Association. 
He,  in  a  stentorian  voice,  let  off  his  theological  venom.  Then 
jumped  up  Richard  Greswell  X  with  a  thin  voice,  saying  much 
the  same,  but  speaking  as  a  scholar ;  but  we  did  not  merely  want 
any  theological  discussion,  so  we  shouted  them  down.  Then  a 
Mr.  Dingle  got  up  and  tried  to  show  that  Darwin  would  have 
done  much  better  if  he  had  taken  him  into  consultation.  He 
used  the  blackboard  and  began  a  mathematical  demonstration 
on  the  question — "  Let  this  point  A  be  man,  and  let  that  point 
B  be  the  mawnkey."  He  got  no  further;  he  was  shouted  down 
with  cries  of  "  mawnkey."  None  of  these  had  spoken  more  than 
three  minutes.  It  was  when  these  were  shouted  down  that 
Henslow  said  he  must  demand  that  the  discussion  should  rest 
on  scientiHc  grounds  only. 

Then  there  were  calls  for  the  Bishop,  but  he  rose  and  said 
he  understood  his  friend  Professor  Beale  had  something  to  say 
first.  Beale,  who  was  an  excellent  histologist,  spoke  to  the  effect 
that  the  new  theory  ought  to  meet  with  fair  discussion,  but 
added,  with  great  modesty,  that  he  himself  had  not  sufficient 
knowledge  to  discuss  the  subject  adequately.  Then  the  Bishop 
spoke  the  speech  that  you  know,  and  the  question  about  his 
mother  being  an  ape,  or  his  grandmother. 

From  the  scientific  point  of  view,  the  speech  was  of 
small  value.  It  was  evident  from  his  mode  of  handling  the 
subject  that  he  had  been  "  crammed  up  to  the  throat,"  and 

*  Li/e  of  Darwin^  l.c,  f  Canon  of  Durham. 

X  Rev.  Richard  Greswell,  B.D„  Tutor  of  Worcester  College. 


i86o  BISHOP  WILBERFORCE'S  SPEECH 


197 


knew  nothing  at  first  hand ;  he  used  no  argument  beyond 
those  to  be  found  in  his  Quarterly  article,  which  appeared 
a  few  days  later,  and  is  now  admitted  to  have  been  in- 
spired by  Owen.  "  He  ridiculed  Darwin  badly  and  Huxley 
savagely;  but,"  confesses  one  of  his  strongest  opponents, 
"  all  in  such  dulcet  tones,  so  persuasive  a  manner,  and  in 
such  well  turned  periods,  that  I  who  had  been  inclined  to 
blame  the  President  for  allowing  a  discussion  that  could 
serve  no  scientific  purpose,  now  forgave  him  from  the  bot- 
tom of  my  heart."  * 

The  Bishop  spoke  thus  "  for  full  half  an  hour  with 
inimitable  spirit,  emptiness  and  unfairness."  "  In  a  light, 
scoffing  tone,  florid  and  fluent,  he  assured  us  there  was 
nothing  in  the  idea  of  evolution;  rock-pigeons  were  what 
rock-pigeons  had  always  been.  Then,  turning  to  his  antag- 
onist with  a  smiling  insolence,  he  begged  to  know,  was  it 
through  his  grandfather  or  his  grandmother  that  he  claimed 
his  descent  from  a  monkey  ?  "  f      n» 

This  was  the  fatal  mistake  of  his  speech.  Huxley  in- 
stantly grasped  the  tactical  advantage  which  the  descent  to 
personalities  gave  him.  He  turned  to  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie, 
who  was  sitting  beside  him,  and  emphatically  striking  his 
hand  upon  his  knee,  exclaimed,  "  The  Lord  hath  delivered 
him  into  mine  hands."     The  bearing  of  the  exclamation 

*  Li/f  0/  Darwin,  l.c, 

f  **  Reminiscences  of  a  Grandmother/*  Macmillan's  Magafdne,  Octo- 
ber 1898.  Professor  Farrar  thinks  this  version  of  what  the  Bishop 
said  is  slightly  inaccurate.  His  impression  is  that  the  words  actually 
used  seemed  at  the  moment  flippant  and  unscientific  rather  than  inso- 
lent, vulgar,  or  personal.  The  Bishop,  he  writes,  **had  been  ulking 
of  the  perpetuity  of  species  of  Birds  ;  and  then,  denying  a  fortiori  the 
derivation  of  the  species  Man  from  Ape,  he  rhetorically  invoked  the 
aid  of  feelings  and  said,  *  If  any  one  were  to  be  willing  to  trace  his 
descent  through  an  ape  as  his  grandfather,  would  he  be  willing  to 
trace  his  descent  similarly  on  the  side  of  Yds  grandmother  ?  *  His  false 
humour  was  an  attempt  to  arouse  the  antipathy  about  degrading 
woman  to  the  quadrumana.  Your  father's  reply  showed  there  was 
vulgarity  as  well  as  folly  in  the  Bishop's  words ;  and  the  impression 
distinctly  was,  that  the  Bishop's  party,  as  they  left  the  room,  felt 
abashed,  and  recognised  that  the  Bishop  had  forgotten  to  behave  like 
a  perfect  gentleman." 


198  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xiy 

did  not  dawn  upon  Sir  Benjamin  until  after  Huxley  had 
completed  his  "  forcible  and  eloquent "  answer  to  the  sci- 
entific part  of  the  Bishop's  argument,  and  proceeded  to 
make  his  famous  retort.* 

On  this  (continues  the  writer  in  MacmiUan's  Magazine)  Mr. 
Huxley  slowly  and  deliberately  arose.  A  slight  tall  figure,  stern 
and  pale,  very  quiet  and  very  grave,t  ^^  stood  before  us  and 
spoke  those  tremendous  words — words  which  no  one  seems  sure 
of  now,  nor,  I  think,  could  remember  just  after  they  were  spoken, 
for  their  meaning  took  away  our  breath,  though  it  left  us  in  no 
doubt  as  to  what  it  was.  He  was  not  ashamed  to  have  a  monkey 
for  his  ancestor;  but  he  would  be  ashamed  to  be  connected  with 
a  man  who  used  great  gifts  to  obscure  the  truth.  No  one 
doubted  his  meaning,  and  the  effect  was  tremendous.  One  lady 
fainted  and  had  to  be  carried  out;  I,  for  one,  jumped  out  of 
my  seat.  "N^ 

•    The  fullest  and  pro*^  bly  most  accurate  account  of  the^ 
concluding  words  is  ti  *  jllowing,  from  a  letter  of  the  late 

*  The  Athen4tum  reports  him  as  saying  that  Darwin's  theory  was 
an  explanation  of  phenomena  in  Natural  History,  as  the  undulatory 
theory  was  of  the  phenomena  of  light.  No  one  objected  to  that  theory 
because  an  undulation  of  light  had  never  been  arrested  and  measured. 
Darwin's  theory  was  an  explanation  of  facts,  and  his  book  was  full  of 
new  facts,  all  bearing  on  his  theory.  Without  asserting  that  every 
part  of  that  theory  had  been  confirmed,  he  maintained  that  it  was  the 
best  explanation  of  the  origin  of  species  which  had  yet  been  offered. 
With  regard  to  the  psychological  distinction  between  men  and  ani- 
mals, man  himself  was  once  a  monad — a  mere  atom,  and  nobody 
could  say  at  what  moment  in  the  history  of  his  development  he 
became  consciously  intelligent.  The  question  was  not  so  much  one 
of  a  transmutation  or  transition  of  species,  as  of  the  production  of 
forms  which  became  permanent. 

Thus  the  short-legged  sheep  of  America  was  not  produced  grad- 
ually, but  originated  in  the  birth  of  an  original  parent  of  the  whole 
stock,  which  had  been  kept  up  by  a  rigid  system  of  artificial  selec- 
tion. 

f  **  Young,  cool,  quiet,  scientific — scientific  in  fact  and  in  treat- 
ment."— ^J.  R.  Green.  A  certain  piquancy  must  have  been  added  to 
the  situation  by  the  superficial  resemblance  in  feature  between  the 
two  men,  so  different  in  temperament  and  expression.  Indeed  next 
day  at  Hardwicke,  a  friend  came  up  to  Mr.  Fanning  and  asked  who 
his  guest  was,  saying,  "Surely  it  is  the  son  of  the  Bishop  of  Ox- 
ford." 


i86o  SPEECH   AT  OXFORD  199 

John  Richard  Green,  then  an  undergraduate,  to  his  friend, 
afterwards  Professor  Boyd  Dawkins  * : — 

I  asserted — and  I  repeat — ^that  a  man  has  no  reason  to  be 
ashamed  of  having  an  ape  for  his  grandfather.  If  there  were  an 
ancestor  whoin  I  should  feel  shame  in  recalling  it  would  rather 
be  a  man — a  man  of  restless  and  versatile  intellect — who,  not 
content  with  an  equivocal  f  success  in  his  own  sphere  of  activity, 
plunges  into  scientific  questions  with  which  he  has  no  real 
acquaintance,  only  to  obscure  them  by  an  aimless  rhetoric,  and 
distract  the  attention  of  his  hearers  from  the  real  point  at  issue 
by  eloquent  digressions  and  skilled  appeals  to  religious  preju- 
dice. X 

Further,  Mr.  A.  G.  Vemon-Harcourt,  F.R.S.,  Reader  in 
Chemistry  at  the  University  of  Oxford,  writes  to  me : — 

The  Bishop  had  rallied  your  father  as  to  the  descent  from  a 
monkey,  asking  as  a  sort  of  joke  how  recent  this  had  been, 
whether  it  was  his  grandfather  or  further  back.  Your  father, 
in  replying  on  this  point,  first  explained  that  the  suggestion  was 
of  descent  through  thousands. of  generations  from  a  common 
ancestor,  and  then  went  on  to  this  effect — "  But  if  this  question 
is  treated,  not  as  a  matter  for  the  calm  investigation  of  science, 
but  as  a  matter  of  sentiment,  and  if  I  am  asked  whether  I  would 
choose  to  be  descended  from  the  poor  animal  of  low  intelligence 
and  stooping  gait,  who  grins  and  chatters  as  we  pass,  or  from 
a  man,  endowed  with  great  ability  and  a  splendid  position,  who 
should  use  these  gifts  "  [here,  as  the  point  became  clear,  there 
was  a  great  outburst  of  applause,  which  mostly  drowned  the 
end  of  the  sentence]  "  to  discredit  and  crush  humble  seekers 
after  truth,  I  hesitate  what  answer  to  make." 

*  The  writer  in  MacmillarCs  tells  me :  **  I  cannot  quite  accept  Mr. 
J.  R.  Green's  sentences  as  your  father's,  though  I  didn't  doubt  that 
they  convey  the  sense  ;  but  then  I  think  that  only  a  shorthand  writer 
could  reproduce  Mr.  Huxley's  singularly  beautiful  style — so  simple 
and  so  incisive.     The  sentence  given  is  much  too  *  Green.' " 

f  My  father  once  told  me  that  he  did  not  remember  using  the  word 
**  equivocal "  in  this  speech.  (See  his  letter  below.)  The  late  Professor 
Victor  Carus  had  the  same  impression,  which  is  corroborated  by  Pro- 
fessor Farrar. 

X  As  the  late  Henry  Fawcett  wrote  in  MacmillatCs  Magazine^  i860: — 
**The  retort  was  so  justly  deserved,  and  so  inimitable  in  its  manner, 
that  no  one  who  was  present  can  ever  forget  the  impression  that  it 
made." 

14 


200  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xiv 

No  doubt  your  father's  words  were  better  than  these,  and 
they  gained  effect  from  his  clear,  deliberate  utterance,  but  in 
outline  and  in  scale  this  represents  truly  what  was  said. 

After  the  commotion  was  over,  "  some  voices  called  for 
Hooker,  and  his  name  having  been  handed  up,  the  President 
invited  him  to  give  his  view  of  the  theory  from  the  Botanical 
side.  This  he  did,  demonstrating  that  the  Bishop,  by  his 
own  showing,  had  never  grasped  the  principles  of  the 
*  Origin,'  and  that  he  was  absolutely  ignorant  of  the  ele- 
ments of  botanical  science.  The  Bishop  made  no  reply, 
and  the  meeting  broke  up."  * 

Account  of  the  Oxford  Meeting  by  the  Rev.  W.  H. 
Freemantle  (in  Charles  Darwin,  his  Life  Told,  &c., 
1892,  p.  238). 

The  Bishop  of  Oxford  attacked  Darwin,  at  first  playfully, 
but  at  last  in  grim  earnest.  It  was  known  that  the  Bishop  had 
written  an  article  against  Darwin  in  the  last  Quarterly  Re- 
view f-f  it  was  also  rumoured  that  Professor  Owen  had  been 
staying  at  Cuddesdon  and  had  primed  the  Bishop,  who  was  to 
act  as  mouthpiece  to  the  great  Palaeontologist,  who  did  not  him- 
self dare  to  enter  the  lists.  The  Bishop,  however,  did  not  show 
himself  master  of  the  facts,  and  made  one  serious  blunder.  A 
fact  which  had  been  much  dwelt  on  as  confirmatory  of  Darwin's 
idea  of  variation,  was  that  a  sheep  had  been  bom  shortly  before 
in  a  flock  in  the  North  of  England,  having  an  addition  of  one 
to  the  vertebrae  of  the  spine.  The  Bishop  was  declaring  with 
rhetorical  exaggeration  that  there  was  hardly  any  evidence  on 
Darwin's  side.  "  What  have  they  to  bring  forward  ?  "  he  ex- 
claimed. "  Some  rumoured  statement  about  a  long-legged 
sheep."  '  But  he  passed  on  to  banter :  "  I  should  like  to  ask 
Professor  Huxley,  who  is  sitting  by  me,  and  is  about  to  tear 
me  to  pieces  when  I  have  sat  down,  as  to  his  belief  in  being 
descended  from  an  ape.  Is  it  on  his  grandfather's  or  his  grand- 
mother's side  that  the  ape  ancestry  comes  in?"  And  then  tak- 
ing a  graver  tone,  he  asserted,  in  a  solemn  peroration,  that  Dar- 
win's views  were  contrary  to  the  revelation  of  God  in  the 
Scriptures.     Professor  Huxley  was  unwilling  to  respond:  but 

♦  Li/e  of  Darwin^  i.e. 

t  It  appeared  in  the  ensuing  number  for  July. 


i86o  CANON   FREEMANTLE'S  ACCOUNT  20I 

he  was  called  for,  and  spoke  with  his  usual  incisiveness  and 
with  some  scorn :  "  I  am  here  only  in  the  interests  of  science," 
he  said,  "  and  I  have  not  heard  anything  which  can  prejudice 
the  case  of  my  august  client."  Then  after  showing  how  little 
competent  the  Bishop  was  to  enter  upon  the  discussion,  he 
touched  on  the  question  of  Creation.  "  You  say  that  develop- 
ment drives  out  the  Creator;  but  you  assert  tiiat  God  made 
you :  and  yet  you  know  that  you  yourself  were  originally  a  little 
piece  of  matter,  no  bigger  than  the  end  of  this  gold  pencil-case." 
Lastly  as  to  the  descent  from  a  monkey,  he  said :  "  I  should 
feel  it  no  shame  to  have  risen  from  such  an  origin ;  but  I  should 
feel  it  a  shame  to  have  sprung  from  one  who  prostituted  the 
gifts  of  culture  and  eloquence  to  the  service  of  prejudice  and  of 
falsehood." 

Many  others  spoke.  Mr.  Gresley,  an  old  Oxford  don,  pointed 
out  that  in  human  nature  at  least  orderly  development  was  not 
the  necessary  rule:  Homer  was  the  greatest  of  poets,  but  he 
lived  3000  years  ago,  and  has  not  produced  his  like. 

Admiral  FitzRoy  was  present,  and  said  he  had  often  ex- 
postulated with  his  old  comrade  of  the  Beagle  for  entertaining 
views  which  were  contradictory  to  the  First  Chapter  of  Genesis. 

Sir  John  Lubbock  declared  that  many  of  the  arguments  by 
which  the  permanence  of  species  was  supported  came  to  nothing, 
and  instanced  some  wheat  which  was  said  to  have  come  off  an 
Egyptian  mummy,  and  was  sent  to  him  to  prove  that  wheat  had 
not  changed  since  the  time  of  the  Pharaohs;  but  which  proved 
to  be  made  of  French  chocolate.  Sir  Joseph  (then  Dr.)  Hooker 
spoke  shortly,  saying  that  he  had  found'the  hypothesis  of  Natu- 
ral Selection  so  helpful  in  explaining  the  phenomena  of  his  own 
subject  of  Botany,  that  he  had  been  constrained  to  accept  it. 
After  a  few  words  from  Darwin's  old  friend,  Professor  Hens- 
low,  who  occupied  the  chair,  the  meeting  broke  up,  leaving  the 
impression  that  those  most  capable  of  estimating  die  afguments 
of  Darwin  in  detail  saw  their  way  to  accept  his  conclusions. 

Note, — Sir  John  Lubbock  also  insisted  on  the  embryological 
evidence  for  evolution.  F.  D. 

T.  H.  Huxley  to  Francis  Darwin  {ibid) 

June  27,  1 891. 
I  should  say  that  Freemantle's  account  is  substantially  correct, 
but  that  Green  has  the  substance  of  my  speech  more  accurately. 
However,  I  am  certain  I  did  not  use  the  word,  "  equivocal." 


202  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xiv 

The  odd  part  of  the  business  is,  that  I  should  not  have  been 
present  except  for  Robert  Chambers.  I  had  heard  of  the  Bish- 
op's intention  to  utilise  the  occasion.  I  knew  he  had  the 
reputation  of  being  a  first-class  controversialist,  and  I  was  quite 
aware  that  if  he  played  his  cards  properly,  we  should  have  little 
chance,  with  such  an  audience,  of  making  an  efficient  defence. 
Moreover,  I  was  very  tired,  and  wanted  to  join  my  wife  at  her 
brother-in-law's  country  house  near  Reading,  on  the  Saturday. 
On  the  Friday  I  met  Chambers  in  the  street,  and  in  reply  to 
some  remark  of  his,  about  his  going  to  the  meeting,  I  said  that 
I  did  not  mean  to  attend  it — did  not  see  the  good  of  giving  up 
peace  and  quietness  to  be  episcopally  pounded.  Chambers  broke 
out  into  vehement  remonstrances,  and  talked  about  my  deserting 
them.  So  I  said,  "  Oh !  if  you  are  going  to  take  it  that  way, 
I'll  come  and  have  my  share  of  what  is  going  on." 

So  I  came,  and  chanced  to  sit  near  old  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie. 
The  Bishop  began  his  speech,  and  to  my  astonishment  very 
soon  showed  that  he  was  so  ignorant  that  he  did  not  know  how 
to  manage  his  own  case.  My  spirits  rose  proportionately,  and 
when  he  turned  to  me  with  his  insolent  question,  I  said  to  Sir 
Benjamin,  in  an  undertone,  "  The  Lord  hath  delivered  him  into 
mine  hands." 

That  sagacious  old  gentleman  stared  at  me  as  if  I  had  lost 
my  senses.  But,  in  fact,  the  Bishop  had  justified  the  severest 
retort  I  could  devise,  and  I  made  up  my  mind  to  let  him  have 
it.  I  was  careful,  however,  not  to  rise  to  reply,  until  the  meet- 
ing called  for  me — ^then  I  let  myself  go. 

In  justice  to  the  Bishop,  I  am  bound  to  say  he  bore  no 
malice,  but  was  always  courtesy  itself  when  we  occasionally  met 
in  after  years.  Hooker  and  I  walked  away  from  the  meeting 
together,  and  I  remember  saying  to  him  that  this  experience 
had  changed  my  opinion  as  to  the  practical  value  of  the  art  of 
public  speaking,  and  that  from  that  time  forth  I  should  carefully 
cultivate  it,  and  try  to  leave  off  hating  it.  I  did  the  former, 
but  never  quite  succeeded  in  the  latter  effort. 

I  did  not  mean  to  trouble  you  with  such  a  long  scrawl  when 
I  began  about  this  piece  of  ancient  history. — Ever  yours  very 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  the  evening  there  was  a  crowded  conversazione  in 
Dr.  Daubeny's  rooms,  and  here,  continues  the  writer  in 
Macmillan^s,  "  everyone  was  eager  to  congratulate  the  hero 
of  the  day.    I  remember  that  some  naive  person  wished  '  it 


i860  result  of   THE   MEETING 


203 


could  come  over  again  ' ;  Mr.  Huxley,  with  the  look  on  his 
face  of  the  victor  who  feels  the  cost  of  victory,  put  us  aside 
saying,  *  Once  in  a  lifetime  is  enough,  if  not  too  much.' " 

In  a  letter  to  me  the  same  writer  remarks — 

I  gathered  from  Mr.  Huxley's  look  when  I  spoke  to  him  at 
Dr.  Daubeny's  that  he  was  not  quite  satisfied  to  have  been 
forced  to  take  so  personal  a  tone — it  a  little  jarred  upon  his 
fine  taste.  But  it  was  the  Bishop  who  first  struck  the  insolent 
note  of  personal  attack. 

Again,  with  reference  to  the  state  of  feeling  at  the 
meeting : — 

I  never  saw  such  a  display  of  fierce  party  spirit,  the  looks 
of  bitter  hatred  which  the  audience  bestowed — (I  mean  the 
majority)  on  us  who  were  on  your  father's  side — as  we  passed 
through  the  crowd  we  felt  that  we  were  expected  to  say  "  how 
abominably  the  Bishop  was  treated  "—or  to  be  considered  out- 
casts and  detestable. 

It  was  very  different,  however,  at  Dr.  Daubeny's, 
"  where,"  says  the  writer  of  the  account  in  Darwin's  Life, 
"  the  almost  sole  topic  was  the  battle  of  the  *  Origin,'  and 
I  was  much  struck  with  the  fair  and  unprejudiced  way  in 
which  the  black  coats  and  white  cravats  of  Oxford  discussed 
the  question,  and  the  frankness  with  which  they  offered 
their  congratulations  to  the  winners  in  the  combat." 

The  result  of  this  encounter,  though  a  check  to  the 
other  side,  cannot,  of  course,  be  represented  as  an  imme- 
diate and  complete  triumph  for  evolutionary  doctrine.  This 
was  precluded  by  the  character  and  temper  of  the  audience, 
most  of  whom  were  less  capable  of  being  convinced  by  the 
arguments  than  shocked  by  the  boldness  of  the  retort,  al- 
though, being  gentlefolk,  as  Professor  Farrar  remarks,  they 
were  disposed  to  admit  on  reflection  that  the  Bishop  had 
erred  on  the  score  of  taste  and  good  manners.  Nevertheless, 
it  was  a  noticeable  feature  of  the  occasion.  Sir  M.  Foster 
tells  me,  that  when  Huxley  .rose  he  was  received  coldly, 
just  a  cheer  of  encouragement  from  his  friends,  the  audience 
as  a  whole  not  joining  in  it.     But  as  he  made  his  points 


204 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xiy 


the  applause  grew  and  widened,  until,  when  he  sat  down, 
the  cheering  was  not  very  much  less  than  that  given  to  the 
Bishop.  To  that  extent  he  carried  an  unwilling  audience 
with  him  by  the  force  of  his  speech.  The  debate  on  the 
ape  question,  however,  was  continued  elsewhere  during  the 
next  two  years,  and  the  evidence  was  completed  by  the 
unanswerable  demonstrations  of  Sir  W.  H.  Flower  at  the 
Cambridge  meeting  of  the  Association  in  1862. 

The  importance  of  the  Oxford  meeting  lay  in  the  open 
resistance  that  was  made  to  authority,  at  a  moment  when 
even  a  drawn  battle  was  hardly  less  effectual  than  acknowl- 
edged victory.  Instead  of  being  crushed  under  ridicule, 
the  new  theories  secured  a  hearing,  all  the  wider,  indeed, 
for  the  startling  nature  of  their  defence. 


CHAPTER   XV 
1860-1863 

In  the  autumn  he  set  to  work  to  make  good  his  promise 
of  demonstrating  the  existence  in  the  simian  brain  of  the 
structures  alleged  to  be  exclusively  human.  The  result  was 
seen  in  his  papers  "On  the  Zoological  Relations  of  Man 
with  the  Lower  Animals  "  {Nat.  Hist.  Rev.,  1861,  pp.  67-68) ; 
"  On  the  Brain  of  Ateles  Paniscus,"  which  appeared  in  the 
Proceedings  of  the  Zoological  Society  for  1861,  and  on  "  Nyc- 
tipithecus  "  in  1862,  while  similar  work  was  undertaken  by 
his  friends  Rolleston  and  Flower.  But  the  brain  was  only 
one  point  among  many,  as,  for  example,  the  hand  and  the 
foot  in  man  and  the  apes ;  and  he  already  had  in  mind  the 
discussion  of  the  whole  question  comprehensively.  On 
January  6  he  writes  to  Sir  J.  Hooker : — 

Some  of  these  days  I  shall  look  up  the  ape  question  again 
and  go  over  the  rest  of  the  organisation  in  the  same  way.  But 
in  order  to  get  a  thorough  grip  of  the  question  I  must  examine 
into  a  good  many  points  for  myself.  The  results,  when  they 
do  come  out,  will,  I  foresee,  astonish  the  natives. 

Full  of  interest  in  this  theme,  he  made  it  the  subject  of 
his  popular  lectures  in  the  spring  of  1861. 

Thus  from  February  to  May  he  lectured  weekly  to 
working  men  on  "  The  Relation  of  Man  to  the  rest  of  the 
Animal  Kingdom,"  and  on  March  22  writes  to  his  wife : — 

My  working  men  stick  by  me  wonderfully,  the  house  being 
fuller  than  ever  last  night.  By  next  Friday  evening  they  will  all 
be  convinced  that  they  are  monkeys.  .  .  .  Said  lecture,  let  me 
inform  you,  was  very  good.  Lyell  came  and  was  rather  aston- 
ished at  the  magnitude  and  attentiveness  of  the  audience. 

These  lectures  to  working  men  were  published  in  the 
Natural  History  Review,  as  was  a  Friday  evening  discourse 

205 


2o6  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

at  the  Royal  Institution  (February  8)  on  "  The  Nature  of 
the  Earliest  Stages  of  Development  of  Animals." 

Meanwhile  the  publication  of  these  researches  led  to 
another  pitched  battle,  in  which  public  interest  was  pro- 
foundly engaged.  The  controversy  which  raged  had  some 
resemblance  to  a  duel  over  a  point  of  honour  and  credit. 
Scientific  technicalities  became  the  catchwords  of  society, 
and  the  echoes  of  the  great  Hippocampus  question  linger  in 
the  delightful  pages  of  the  Water-Babies.  Of  this  fight 
Huxley  writes  to  Sir  J.  Hooker  on  April  i8,  1861 : — 

A  controversy  between  Owen  and  myself,  which  I  can  only 
call  absurd  (as  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  about  the  facts),  has 
been  going  on  in  the  Athenceum,  and  I  wound  it  up  in  disgust 
last  week. 

And  again  on  April  27 : — 

Owen  occupied  an  entirely  untenable  position — ^but  I  am 
nevertheless  surprised  he  did  not  try  "  abusing  plaintiff's  at- 
torney." The  fact  is  he  made  a  prodigious  blunder  in  com- 
mencing the  attack,  and  now  his  only  chance  is  to  be  silent  and 
let  people  forget  the  exposure.  I  do  not  believe  that  in  the 
whole  history  of  science  there  is  a  case  of  any  man  of  reputa- 
tion getting  himself  into  such  a  contemptible  position.  He  will 
be  the  laughing-stock  of  all  the  continental  anatomists. 

Rolleston  has  a  great  deal  of  Oxford  slough  to  shed,  but  on 
that  very  ground  his  testimony  has  been  of  most  especial  service. 
Fancy  that  man telling  Maskelyne  that  RoUeston's  observa- 
tions were  entirely  confirmatory  of  Owen. 

About  the  same  time  he  writes  to  his  wife : — 

April  16. — People  are  talking  a  good  deal  about  the  "Man and 
the  Apes  "  question,  and  I  hear  that  somebody,  I  suspect  Monck- 
ton  Milnes,  has  set  afloat  a  poetical  squib  on  the  subject.*  .  .  . 

♦  The  squib  in  question,  dated  **  the  Zoological  Gardens,"  and 
signed  *'  Gorilla,"  appeared  in  Punch  for  May  15, 1861,  under  a  picture 
of  that  animal,  bearing  the  sign,  *'Am  la  Man  and  a  Brother?'* 

The  concluding  verses  run  as  follows  : 


Ji^yn  HUXLEY repViti 
That  C7«^^W  he  lies 

And  garbles  his  LAtin  quotarion  ; 
That  his  facts  are  not  new, 
His  mistakes  not  a  few, 

Detrimental  to  his  reputation. 


**  To  twice  slay  the  slain  '* 

By  dint  of  the  Brain 
(Thus  ^i/-rZ,^K  concludes  his  review). 

Is  but  labour  in  vain. 

Unproductive  of  gain. 
And  so  I  shall  bid  you  ''  Adieu ! " 


i862  EDINBURGH   LECTURES  ON   MAN 


207 


Some  think  my  winding-up  too  strong,  but  I  trust  the  day  will 
never  come  when  I  shall  abstain  from  expressing  my  contempt 
for  those  who  prostitute  Science  to  the  Service  of  Error.  At 
anyrate  I  am  not  old  enough  for  that  yet.  Darwin  came  in 
just  now.  I  get  no  scoldings  for  pitching  into  the  common 
enemy  now ! ! 

I  would  give  you  fifty  guesses  (he  writes  to  Hooker  on 
April  30),  and  you  should  not  find  out  the  author  of  the  Punch 
poem.  I  saw  it  in  MS.  three  weeks  ago,  and  was  told  the  author 
was  a  friend  of  mine.  But  I  remained  hopelessly  in  the  dark 
till  yesterday.  What  do  you  say  to  Sir  Philip  Egerton  coming 
out  in  that  line  ?  I  am  told  he  is  the  author,  and  the  fact 
speaks  volumes  for  Owen's  perfect  success  in  damning  himself. 

In  the  midst  of  the  fight  came  a  surprising  invitation. 
On  April  10  he  writes  to  his  wife : — 

They  have  written  to  me  from  the  Philosophical  Institute 
of  Edinburgh  to  ask  me  to  give  two  lectures  on  the  "  Relation  of 
Man  to  the  Lower  Animals  "  next  session.  I  have  replied  that 
if  they  can  give  me  January  3  and  7  for  lecture  days  I  will  do  it 
— if  not,  not.  Fancy  unco  guid  Edinburgh  requiring  illumina- 
tion on  the  subject !  They  know  my  views,  so  if  they  do  not 
like  what  I  shall  have  to  tell  them,  it  is  their  own  fault. 

These  lectures  were  eventually  delivered  on  January  4 
and  7,  1862,  and  were  well  reported  in  the  Edinburgh  pa- 
pers. The  substance  of  them  appears  as  Part  2  in  Man*s 
Place  in  Nature,  the  first  lecture  describing  the  general 
nature  of  the  process  of  development  among  vertebrate 
animals,  and  the  modifications  of  the  skeleton  in  the  mam- 
malia ;  the  second  dealing  with  the  crucial  points  of  com- 
parison between  the  higher  apes  and  man,  viz.  the  hand, 
foot,  and  brain.  He  showed  that  the  differences  between 
man  and  the  higher  apes  were  no  greater  than  those  be- 
tween the  higher  and  lower  apes.  If  the  Darwinian  hy- 
pothesis explained  the  common  ancestry  of  the  latter,  the 
anatomist  would  have  no  difficulty  with  the  origin  of  man, 
so  far  as  regards  the  gap  between  him  and  the  higher  apes. 

Yet,  though  convinced  that  "  that  hypothesis  is  as  near 
an  approximation  to  the  truth  as,  for  example,  the  Coper- 
nican  hypothesis  was  to  the  true  theory  of  the  planetary 


2o8  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

motions,"  he  steadfastly  refused  to  be  an  advocate  of  the 
theory,  "  if  by  an  advocate  is  meant  one  whose  business  it 
is  to  smooth  over  real  difficulties,  and  to  persuade  when  he 
cannot  convince." 

In  common  fairness  he  warned  his  audience  of  the  one 
missing  link  in  the  chain  of  evidence — ^the  fact  that  selective 
breeding  has  not  yet  produced  species  sterile  to  one  another. 
But  it  is  to  be  adopted  as  a  working  hypothesis  like  other 
scientific  generalisations,  "  subject  to  the  production  of 
proof  that  physiological  species  may  be  produced  by  se- 
lective breeding ;  just  as  a  physical  philosopher  may  accept 
the  undulatory  theory  of  light,  subject  to  the  proof  of  the 
existence  of  the  hypothetical  ether ;  or  as  the  chemist  adopts 
the  atomic  theory,  subject  to  the  proof  of  the  existence  of 
atoms;  and  for  exactly  the  same  reasons,  namely,  that  it 
has  an  immense  amount  of  prima  facie  probability;  that  it 
is  the  only  means  at  present  within  reach  of  reducing  the 
chaos  of  observed  facts  to  order;  and  lastly,  that  it  is  the 
most  powerful  instrument  of  investigation  which  has  been 
presented  to  naturalists  since  the  invention  of  the  natural 
system  of  classification,  and  the  commencement  of  the  sys- 
tematic study  of  embryology." 

As  for  the  repugnance  of  most  men  to  admitting  kin- 
ship with  the  apes,  "  thoughtful  men,"  he  says,  "  once  es- 
caped from  the  blinding  influences  of  traditional  prejudices, 
will  find  in  the  lowly  stock  whence  man  has  sprung  the 
best  evidence  of  the  splendour  of  his  capacities;  and  will 
discern,  in  his  long  progress  through  the  past,  a  reasonable 
ground  of  faith  in  his  attainment  of  a  nobler  future." 

A  simile,  with  which  he  enforced  this  elevating  point  of 
view,  which  has  since  eased  the  passage  of  many  minds  to 
the  acceptance  of  evolution,  seems  to  have  been  much  ap- 
preciated by  his  audience.  It  was  a  comparison  of  man  to 
the  Alps,  which  turn  out  to  be  "  of  one  substance  with  the 
dullest  clay,  but  raised  by  inward  forces  to  that  place  of 
proud  and  seemingly  inaccessible  glory." 

The  lectures  were  met  at  first  with  astonishing  quiet, 
but  it  was  not  long  before  the  stones  began  to  fly.  The 
Witness  of  January  1 1  lashed  itself  into  a  fury  over  the  fact 


i862  EDINBURGH   LECTURES  ON   MAN  2C9 

that  the  audience  applauded  this  "  anti-scriptural  and  most 
debasing  theory  .  .  .  standing  in  blasphemous  contradic- 
tion to  biblical  narrative  and  doctrine,"  instead  of  express- 
ing their  resentment  at  this  "  foul  outrage  committed  upon 
them  individually,  and  upon  the  whole  species  as  '  made  in 
the  likeness  of  God/  "  by  deserting  the  hall  in  a  body,  or 
using  some  more  emphatic  form  of  protest  against  the  cor- 
ruption of  youth  by  "  the  vilest  and  beastliest  paradox  ever 
vented  in  ancient  or  modem  times  amongst  Pagans  or 
Christians."  In  his  finest  vein  of  sarcasm,  the  writer  ex- 
presses his  surprise  that  the  meeting  did  not  instantly  resolve 
itself  into  a  "  Gorilla  Enlancipation  Society,"  or  propose  to 
hear  a  lecture  from  an  apostle  of  Mormonism ;  "  even  this 
would  be  a  less  offensive,  mischievous,  and  inexcusable  ex- 
hibition than  was  made  in  the  recent  two  lectures  by  Pro- 
fessor Huxley,"  etc. 

Jermyn  Street,  January  13,  1862. 

My  dear  Darwin — In  the  first  place  a  new  year's  greeting 
to  you  and  yours.  In  the  next,  I  enclose  this  slip  (please  return 
it  when  you  have  read  it)  to  show  you  what  I  have  been  doing 
in  the  north. 

Everybody  prophesied  I  should  be  stoned  and  cast  out  of  the 
city  gate,  but,  on  the  contrary,  I  met  with  unmitigated  ap- 
plause ! !    Three  cheers  for  the  progress  of  liberal  opinion  ! ! 

The  report  is  as  good  as  any,  but  they  have  not  put  quite 
rightly  what  I  said  about  your  views,  respecting  which  I  took 
my  old  line  about  the  infertility  difficulty. 

Furthermore,  they  have  not  reported  my  statement  that 
whether  you  were  right  or  wrong,  some  form  of  the  progressive 
development  theory  is  certainly  true.  Nor  have  they  reported 
here  my  distinct  statement  that  I  believe  man  and  the  apes  to 
have  come  from  one  stock. 

Having  got  thus  far,  I  find  the  lecture  better  reported  in 
the  C  our  ant,  so  I  send  you  that  instead. 

I  mean  to  publish  the  lecture  in  full  by  and  by  (about  the 
time  the  orchids  come  out). — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  deserved  the  greatest  credit  for  not  having  made  an  on- 
slaught on  Brewster  for  his  foolish  impertinence  about  your 
views  in  Good  Words,  but  declined  to  stir  nationality,  which 
you  know  (in  him)  is  rather  more  than  his  Bible. 


2IO  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

Jkrmyn  Street,  January  i6t  1862. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  wonder  if  we  are  ever  to  meet  again  in 
this  world !  At  anyrate  I  send  to  the  remote  province  of  Kew, 
Greeting,  and  my  best  wishes  for  the  new  year  to  you  and  yours. 
I  also  inclose  a  slip  from  an  Edinburgh  paper  containing  a 
report  of  my  lecture  on  the  "  Relation  of  Man,"  etc.  As  you 
will  see,  I  went  in  for  the  entire  animal  more  strongly,  in  fact, 
than  they  have  reported  me.  I  told  them  in  so  many  words 
that  I  entertained  no  doubt  of  the  origin  of  man  from  the  same 
stock  as  the  apes. 

And  to  my  great  delight,  in  saintly  Edinburgh  itself  the  an- 
nouncement met  with  nothing  but  applause.  For  myself  I  can't 
say  that  the  praise  or  blame  of  my  audience  was  much  matter, 
but  it  is  a  g^and  indication  of  the  general  disintegration  of  old 
prejudices  which  is  going  on. 

I  shall  see  if  I  cannot  make  something  more  of  the  lectures 
by  delivering  them  again  in  London,  and  then  I  shall  publish 
them. 

The  report  does  not  put  nearly  strong  enough  what  I  said  in 
favour  of  Darwin's  views.  I  affirmed  it  to  be  the  only  scientific 
hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  species  in  existence,  and  expressed 
my  belief  that  the  one  gap  in  the  evidence  would  be  filled  up,  as 
I  always  do. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermyn  Street,  January  20,  1862. 

My  dear  Darwin — The  inclosed  article,  which  has  been 
followed  up  by  another  more  violent,  more  scurrilously  personal, 
and  more  foolish,  will  prove  to  you  that  my  labour  has  not  been 
in  vain,  and  that  your  views  and  mine  are  likely  to  be  better 
ventilated  in  Scotland  than  they  have  been. 

I  was  quite  uneasy  at  getting  no  attack  from  the  Witness, 
thinking  I  must  have  overestimated  the  impression  I  had  made, 
and  the  favourableness  of  the  reception  of  what  I  said.  But  the 
raving  of  the  Witness  is  clear  testimony  that  my  notion  was 
correct. 

I  shall  send  a  short  reply  to  the  Scotsman  for  the  purpose  of 
further  advertising  the  question. 

With  regard  to  what  are  especially  your  doctrines,  I  spoke 
much  more  favourably  than  I  am  reported  to  have  done.  I 
expressed  no  doubt  as  to  their  ultimate  establishment,  but  as  I 
particularly  wished  not  to  be  misrepresented  as  an  advocate 
trying  to  soften  or  explain  away  real  difficulties,  I  did  not  in 
speaking  enter  into  the  details  of  what  is  to  be  said  in  diminish- 


i862  EDINBURGH   LECTURES  ON   MAN  21 1 

ing  the  weight  of  the  hybrid  difficulty.  All  this  will  be  put  fulLy 
when  I  print  the  Lecture. 

The  arguments  put  in  your  letter  are  those  which  I  have 
urged  to  other  people  —  of  the  opposite  side  —  over  and  over 
again.  I  have  told  my  students  that  I  entertain  no  doubt  that 
twenty  years*  experiments  on  pigeons  conducted  by  a  skilled 
physiologist,  instead  of  by  a  mere  breeder,  would  give  us 
physiological  species  sterile  inter  se,  from  a  common  stock  (and 
in  this,  if  I  mistake  not,  I  go  further  than  you  do  yourself), 
and  I  have  told  them  that  when  these  experiments  have  been 
performed  I  shall  consider  your  views  to  have  a  complete 
physical  basis,  and  to  stand  on  as  firm  ground  as  any  physio- 
logical theory  whatever. 

It  was  impossible  for  me,  in  the  time  I  had,  to  lay  all  this 
down  to  my  Edinburgh  audience,  and  in  default  of  full  ex- 
planation it  was  far  better  to  seem  to  do  scanty  justice  to  you.  I 
am  constitutionally  slow  of  adopting  any  theory  that  I  must 
needs  stick  by  when  I  have  once  gone  in  for  it;  but  for  these 
two  years  I  have  been  gravitating  towards  your  doctrines,  and 
since  the  publication  of  your  primula  paper  with  accelerated 
velocity.  By  about  this  time  next  year  I  expect  to  have  shot 
past  you,  and  to  find  you  pitching  into  me  for  being  more  Dar- 
winian than  yourself.  However,  you  have  set  me  going,  and 
must  just  take  the  consequences,  for  I  warn  you  I  will  stop  at 
no  point  so  long  as  clear  reasoning  will  carry  me  further. 

My  wife  and  I  were  very  grieved  to  hear  you  had  had  such 
a  sick  house,  but  I  hope  the  change  in  the  weather  has  done  you 
all  good.    Anything  is  better  than  the  damp  warmth  we  had. 

I  will  take  great  care  of  the  three  "  Barriers."  *  I  wanted  to 
cut  it  up  in  the  Saturday,  but  how  I  am  to  fulfil  my  benevolent 
intentions — with  five  lectures  a  week — a  lecture  at  the  Royal 
Institution  and  heaps  of  other  things  on  my  hands,  I  don't  know. 
— Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  am  very  glad  to  hear  about  Brown  Sequard ;  he  is  a  thor- 
oughly good  man,  and  told  me  it  was  worth  while  to  come  all 
the  way  to  Oxford  to  hear  the  Bishop  pummelled. 

In  the  above-mentioned  letter  to  the  Scotsman  of  Janu- 
ary 24  he  expresses  his  unfeigned  satisfaction  at  the  fulfil- 

*  A  pamphlet  called  **The  Three  Barriers,  by  G.  R.,  being  notes 
on  Mr.  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  1861,  8vo.'*  Habitat,  structure,  and 
procreative  power  are  given  as  these  three  barriers  to  Darwinism, 
against  which  natural  theology  takes  its  stand  on  Final  Causes. 


212  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

ment  of  the  three  objects  of  his  address,  namely,  to  state 
fully  and  fairly  his  conclusions,  to  avoid  giving  unnecessary 
offence,  and  thirdly,  "  while  feeling  assured  of  the  just  and 
reasonable  dealing  of  the  respectable  part  of  the  Scottish 
press,  I  naturally  hoped  for  noisy  injustice  and  unreason 
from  the  rest,  seeing,  as  I  did,  the  best  security  for  the  dis- 
semination of  my  views  through  regions  which  they  might 
not  otherwise  reach,  in  the  certainty  of  a  violent  attack  by 
(the  IVitnessy 

The  applause  of  the  audience,  he  says,  afforded  him 
genuine  satisfaction,  "  because  it  bids  me  continue  in  the 
faith  on  which  I  acted,  that  a  man  who  speaks  out  honestly 
and  fearlessly  that  which  he  knows,  and  that  which  he  be- 
lieves, will  always  enlist  the  good-will  and  the  respect,  how- 
ever much  he  may  fail  in  winning  the  assent,  of  his  fel- 
low-men." 

About  this  time  a  new  field  of  interest  was  opened  out 
to  him,  closely  connected  with,  indeed,  and  completing,  the 
ape  question.  Sir  Charles  Lyell  was  engaged  in  writing 
his  Antiquity  of  Matty  and  asked  Huxley  to  supply  him  with 
various  anatomical  data  touching  the  ape  question,  and 
later  to  draw  him  a  diagram  illustrating  the  peculiarities 
of  the  newly  discovered  Neanderthal  skull  as  compared  with 
other  skulls.  He  points  out  in  his  letters  to  Lyell  that  the 
range  of  cranial  capacity  between  the  highest  and  the  low- 
est German — "  one  of  the  mediatised  princes,  I  suppose  "  * 
— or  the  Malayan  or  Peruvian,  is  almost  loo  per  cent;  in 
absolute  amount  twice  as  much  as  the  difference  between 
that  of  the  largest  simian  and  the  smallest  human  capacity, 
so  that  in  seeking  an  ordinal  difference  between  man  and 
the  apes,  "  it  would  certainly  be  well  to  let  go  the  head, 
though  I  am  afraid  it  does  not  mend  matters  much  to  lay 
hold  of  the  foot." 

And  on  January  25,  1862 : — 

I  have  been  skull-measuring  all  day  at  the  College  of  Sur- 
geons.   The  Neanderthal  skull  may  be  described  as  a  slightly 

♦  The  minor  princes  of  Germany,  whose  territories  were  annexed 
to  larger  states,  and  who  thus  exchanged  a  direct  for  a  mediate  share 
in  the  imperial  government. 


i862  BEGINS  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  WORK 


213 


exaggerated  modification  of  one  of  the  two  types  (and  the 
lower)  of  Australian  skulls. 

After  the  fashion  of  accounting  for  the  elephant  of  old,  I 
suppose  it  will  be  said  that  it  was  imported.  But  luckily  the 
differences,  though  only  of  degree,  are  rather  too  marked  for 
this  hypothesis. 

I  only  wish  I  had  a  clear  six  months  to  work  at  the  subject. 
Little  did  I  dream  what  the  undertaking  to  arrange  your  three 
woodcuts  would  lead  to.  It  will  come  in  the  long-run,  I  believe, 
to  a  new  ethnological  method,  new  modes  of  measurement,  a 
new  datum  line,  and  new  methods  of  registration. 

If  one  had  but  two  heads  and  neither  required  sleep ! 

One  immediate  result  of  his  investigations,  which  ap- 
peared in  a  lecture  at  the  Royal  Institution  (February  7, 
1862),  "  On  the  Fossil  Remains  of  Man,"  was  incorpo- 
rated in  Man's  Place  in  Nature.  But  a  more  important  con- 
sequence of  this  impulse  was  that  he  went  seriously  into 
the  study  of  Ethnology.  Of  his  work  in  this  branch  of 
natural  science,  Professor  Virchow,  speaking  at  the  dinner 
given  him  by  the  English  medical  profession  on  October 
5,  1898,  declared  that  in  the  eyes  of  German  savants  it 
alone  would  suffice  to  secure  immortal  reverence  for  his 
name. 

The  concluding  stage  in  the  long  controversy  raised  first 
at  Oxford,  was  the  British  Association  meeting  at  Cam- 
bridge in  1862.  It  was  here  that  Professor  (afterwards  Sir 
W.  H.)  Flower  made  his  public  demonstration  of  the  exist- 
ence in  apes  of  the  cerebral  characters  said  to  be  peculiar 
to  man. 

From  the  ist  to  the  9th  of  October  Huxley  stayed  at 
Cambridge  as  the  guest  of  Professor  Fawcett  at  Trinity 
Hall,  running  over  to  Felixstow  on  the  5th  to  see  his  wife, 
whose  health  did  not  allow  her  to  accompany  him. 

As  President  of  Section  D  he  had  a  good  deal  to  do, 
and  he  describes  the  course  of  events  in  a  letter  to  Dar- 
win:— 

26  Abbey  Place,  Oct.  9,  1862. 

My  dear  Darwin — It  is  a  source  of  sincere  pleasure  to  me 
to  learn  that  anything  I  can  say  or  do  is  a  pleasure  to  you,  and 
I  was  therefore  very  glad  to  get  your  letter  at  that  whirligig  of 


214  ^^^^  ^^   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

an  association  meeting  the  other  day.  We  all  missed  you,  but 
I  think  it  was  as  well  you  did  not  come,  for  though  I  am  pretty 
tough,  as  you  know,  I  found  the  pace  rather  killing.  Nothing 
could  exceed  the  hospitality  and  kindness  of  the  University 
people — ^and  that,  together  with  a  great  deal  of  speaking  on  the 
top  of  a  very  bad  cold,  which  I  contrived  to  catch  just  before 
going  down,  has  somewhat  used  me  up. 

Owen  came  down  with  the  obvious  intention  of  attacking  me 
on  all  points.  Each  of  his  papers  was  an  attack,  and  he  went  so 
far  as  to  offer  stupid  and  unnecessary  opposition  to  proposals  of 
mine  in  my  own  committee.  However,  he  got  himself  sold  at  all 
points.  .  .  .  The  Polypterus  paper  and  the  Aye-Aye  paper  fell 
flat.  The  latter  was  meant  to  raise  a  discussion  on  your  views, 
but  it  was  all  a  stale  hash,  and  I  only  made  some  half  sarcastic 
remarks  which  stopped  any  further  attempts  at  discussion.  .  .  . 

I  took  my  book  to  Scotland  but  did  nothing.  I  shall  ask 
leave  to  send  you  a  bit  or  two  as  I  get  on. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

A  "  Society  for  the  propagation  of  common  honesty  in  all 
parts  of  the  world  "  was  established  at  Cambridge.  I  want  you 
to  belong  to  it,  but  I  will  say  more  about  it  by  and  by. 

This  admirable  society,  which  was  also  to  **  search  for 
scientific  truth,  especially  in  biology,"  seems  to  have  been 
but  short  lived.  At  all  events,  I  can  find  only  two  refer- 
ences to  subsequent  meetings,  on  October  7  and  December 
19  in  this  year. 

A  few  days  later  a  final  blow  was  struck  in  the  battle 
over  the  ape  question.  He  writes  on  October  15  how  he 
has  written  a  letter  to  the  Medical  Times — his  last  word 
on  the  subject,  summing   up  in  most  emphatic  terms : — 

I  have  written  the  letter  with  the  greatest  care,  and  there  is 
nothing  coarse  or  violent  in  it.  But  it  shall  put  an  end  to  all  the 
humbug  that  has  been  going  on.  .  .  .  Rolleston  will  come  out 
with  his  letter  in  the  same  number,  and  the  smash  will  be  awful, 
but  most  thoroughly  merited. 

These  several  pieces  of  work,  struck  out  at  different 
times  in  response  to  various  impulses,  were  now  combined 
and  re-shaped  into  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  the  first  book 
which  was  published  by  him.  Thus  he  writes  to  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  on  May  5,  1862 : — 


i862  MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  21 5 

Of  course  I  shall  be  delighted  to  discuss  anything  with 
you,*  and  the  more  so  as  I  mean  to  put  the  whole  queation 
before  the  world  in  another  shape  in  my  little  book,  whose  title 
is  announced  as  Evidences  as  to  Man's  Place  in  Nature.  I  have 
written  the  first  two  essays,  the  second  containing  the  sub- 
stance of  my  Edinburgh  Lecture.  I  recollect  you  once  asked  me 
for  something  to  quote  on  the  Man  question,  so  if  you  want, 
anything  in  that  way  the  MS.  is  at  your  service. 

Lyell  looked  over  the  proofs,  and  the  following  letters 
are  in  reply  to  his  criticisms: — 

Ardrishaig,  Loch  Fyne,  Aug.  17,  1863. 

My  dear  Sir  Charles — I  take  advantage  of  my  first  quiet 
day  to  reply  to  your  letter  of  the  9th;  and  in  the  first  place  let 
me  thank  you  very  much  for  your  critical  remarks,  as  I  shall 
find  them  of  great  service. 

With  regard  to  such  matters  as  verbal  mistakes,  you  must 
recollect  that  the  greater  part  of  the  proof  was  wholly  uncor- 
rected. But  the  reader  might  certainly  do  his  work  better.  I 
do  not  think  you  will  find  room  to  complain  of  any  want  of  dis- 
tinctness in  my  definition  of  Owen's  position  touching  the  Hip- 
pocampus question.  I  mean  to  give  the  whole  history  of  the 
business  in  a  note,  so  that  the  paraphrase  of  Sir  Ph.  Egerton's 
line  "  To  which  Huxley  replies  that  Owen  he  lies,"  shall  be  un- 
mistakable.t 

I  will  take  care  about  the  Cheiroptera,  and  I  will  look  at 
Lamarck  again.  But  I  doubt  if  I  shall  improve  my  estimate  of 
the  latter.  The  notion  of  common  descent  was  not  his — still 
less  that  of  modification  by  variation — and  he  was  as  far  as  De 
Maillet  from  seeing  his  way  to  any  vera  causa  by  which  varieties 
might  be  intensified  into  species. 

If  Darwin  is  right  about  natural  selection — ^the  discovery  of 
this  vera  causa  sets  him  to  my  mind  in  a  different  region  alto- 
gether from  all  his  predecessors — and  I  should  no  more  call  his 
doctrine  a  modification  of  Lamarck's  than  I  should  call  the 
Newtonian  theory  of  the  celestial  motions  a  modification  of  the 
Ptolemaic  system.  Ptolemy  imagined  a  mode  of  explaining 
those  motions.  Newton  proved  their  necessity  from  the  laws 
and  a  force  demonstrably  in  operation.    If  he  is  only  right  Dar- 

*  Referring   to    the   address  on   **  Geological    Contemporaneity** 
delivered  in  1862  at  the  Geological  Society,  see  p.  220. 
f  See  p.  206. 
15 


2i6  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

win  will,  I  think,  take  his  place  with  such  men  as  Harvey,  and 
even  if  he  is  wrong  his  sobriety  and  accuracy  of  thought  will 
put  him  on  a  far  different  level  from  Lamarck.  I  want  to  make 
this  clear  to  people. 

I  am  disposed  to  agree  with  you  about  the  "emasculate" 
and  "  uncircumcised  " — partly  for  your  reasons,  partly  because 
I  believe  it  is  an  excellent  rule  always  to  erase  anything  that 
strikes  one  as  particularly  smart  when  writing  it.  But  it  is  a 
great  piece  of  self-denial  to  abstain  from  expressing  my  peculiar 
antipathy  to  the  people  indicated,  and  I  hope  I  shall  be  rewarded 
for  the  virtue. 

As  to  the  secondary  causes  I  only  wished  to  guard  myself 
from  being  understood  to  imply  that  I  had  any  comprehension 
of  the  meaning  of  the  term.  If  my  phrase  looks  naughty  I  will 
alter  it.  What  I  want  is  to  be  read,  and  therefore  to  give  no 
unnecessary  handle  to  the  enemy.  There  will  be  row  enough 
whatever  I  do. 

Our  Commission  here  *  implicates  us  in  an  inquiry  of  some 
difficulty,  and  which  involves  the  interests  of  a  great  many  poor 
people.  I  am  afraid  it  will  not  leave  me  very  much  leisure.  But 
we  are  in  the  midst  of  a  charming  country,  and  the  work  is  not 
1  unpleasant  or  uninteresting.  If  the  sun  would  only  shine  more 
than  once  a  week  it  would  be  perfect.  —  With  kind  remem- 
.branoes  to  Lady  Lyell,  believe  me,  faithfully  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

We  shall  be  here  for  the  next  ten  days  at  least.  But  my 
\wife  will  always  know  my  whereabouts. 

Jermyn  Street,  March  23,  1863. 
'My  dear  Sir  Charles — I  suspect  that  the  passage  to  which 
you  refer  must  have  been  taken  from  my  unrevised  proofs,  for  it 
corresponds  very  nearly  with  what  is  written  at  p.  97  of  my 
book. 

Flower  has  recently  discovered  that  the  Siamang*s  brain 

'  affords  an  even  more  curious  exception  to  the  general  rule  than 

that  6i  Mycetes,  as  the  cerebral  hemispheres  leave  part  not  only 

'  of  the  sides  but  of  the  hinder  end  of  the  cerebellum  uncovered. 

As  it  is  one  of  the  Anthropoid  apes  and  yet  differs  in  this 

respect  far  more  widely  from  the  gorilla  than  the  gorilla  differs 

from  man,  it  offers  a  charming  example  of  the  value  of  cerebral 

characters. 

♦  The  Fishery  Commission. 


1863  MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  21/ 

Flower  publishes  a  paper  on  the  subject  in  the  forthcoming 
number  of  the  iV^.  H,  Review. 

Might  it  not  be  well  to  allude  to  the  fact  that  the  existence 
of  the  posterior  lobe,  posterior  comu,  and  hippocampus  in  the 
Orang  has  been  publicly  demonstrated  to  an  audience  of  experts 
at  the  College  of  Surgeons? — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  success  of  Man^s  Place  was  immediate,  despite  such 
criticisms  as  that  of  the  AthetuBum,  that  "  Lyell's  object  is  to 
make  man  old,  Huxley's  to  degrade  him."  By  the  middle 
of  February  it  reached  its  second  thousand;  in  July  it  is 
heard  of  as  republished  in  America;  at  the  same  time  L. 
Buchner  writes  that  he  wished  to  translate  it  into  German, 
but  finds  himself  forestalled  by  Victor  Carus.  From  another 
aspect.  Lord  Enniskillen,  thanking  him  for  the  book,  says 
(March  3),  "  I  believe  you  are  already  excommunicated  by 
book,  bell,  and  candle,"  while  in  an  undated  note,  Bollaert 
writes,  "  The  Bishop  of  Oxford  the  other  day  spoke  about 
'  the  church  having  been  in  danger  of  late,  by  such  books 
as  Colenso's,  but  that  it  (the  church)  was  now  restored.* 
And  this  at  a  time,  he  might  have  added,  when  the  works 
of  Darwin,  Lyell,  and  Huxley  are  torn  from  the  hands  of 
Mudie's  shopmen,  as  if  they  were  novels — (see  Daily  Tele- 
graph, April  10)." 

At  the  same  time,  the  impression  left  by  his  work  upon 
the  minds  of  the  leading  men  of  science  may  be  judged 
from  a  few  words  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  who  writes  to  a 
friend  on  March  15,  1863  {Life  and  Letters,  ii.  366) : — 

Huxley's  second  thousand  is  going  off  well.  If  he  had 
leisure  like  you  and  me,  and  the  vigour  and  logic  of  the  lectures, 
and  his  address  to  the  Geological  Society,  and  half  a  dozen  other 
recent  works  (letters  to  the  Times  on  Darwin,  etc.),  had  been 
all  in  one  book,  what  a  position  he  would  occupy !  I  entreated 
him  not  to  undertake  the  Natural  History  Review  before  it 
began.  The  responsibility  all  falls  on  the  man  of  chief  energy 
and  talent;  it  is  a  quarterly  mischief,  and  will  end  in  knocking 
him  up. 

A  similar  estimate  appears  from  an  earlier  letter  of  March 
II,  1859  (^*/^  ^w^  Letters,  ii.  321),  when  he  quotes  Huxley's 


2i8  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

Opinion  of  Mansel's  Bampton  Lectures  on  the  Litptits  of 
Religums  Thought: — 

A  friend  of  mine,  Huxley,  who  will  soon  take  rank  as  one 
of  the  first  naturalists  we  have  ever  produced,  begged  me  to 
read  these  sermons  as  first  ratCj  "although,  regarding  the  au- 
thor as  a  churchman,  you  will  probably  compare  him,  as  I  did, 
to  the  drunken  fellow  in  Hogarth's  contested  election,  who  is 
sawing  through  the  signpost  at  the  other  party's  public-house, 
forgetting  he  is  sitting  at  the  other  end  of  it.  But  read  them 
as  a  piece  of  clear  and  unanswerable  reasoning." 

In  the  1894  preface  to  the  re-issue  of  Man*s  Place  in 
the  Collected  Essays,  Huxley  speaks  as  follows  of  the  warn- 
ings he  received  against  publishing  on  so  dangerous  a  topic, 
of  the  storm  which  broke  upon  his  head,  and  the  small  re- 
sult which,  in  the  long  run,  it  produced  * : 

Magna  est  Veritas  et  prcevalehiti  Truth  is  great,  certainly, 
but  considering  her  greatness,  it  is  curious  what  a  long  time  she 
is  apt  to  take  about  prevailing.  When,  towards  the  end  of  1862, 
I  had  finished  writing  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  I  could  say  with 
a  good  conscience  that  my  conclusions  "  had  not  been  formed 
hastily  or  enunciated  crudely."  I  thought  I  had  earned  the  right 
to  publish  them,  and  even  fancied  I  might  be  thanked  rather 
than  reproved  for  doing  so.  However,  in  my  anxiety  to  publish 
nothing  erroneous,  I  asked  a  highly  competent  anatomist  and 
very  good  friend  of  mine  to  look  through  my  proofs,  and,  if  he 
could,  point  out  any  errors  of  fact.  I  was  well  pleased  when  he 
returned  them  without  criticism  on  that  score;  but  my  satis- 
faction was  speedily  dashed  by  the  very  earnest  warning  as  to 
the  consequences  of  publication,  which  my  friend's  interest  in 
my  welfare  led  him  to  give.  But,  as  I  have  confessed  elsewhere, 
when  I  was  a  young  man,  there  was  just  a  little — a  mere  soupgon 
— in  my  composition  of  that  tenacity  of  purpose  which  has 
another  name ;  and  I  felt  sure  that  all  the  evil  things  prophesied 
would  not  be  so  painful  to  me  as  the  giving  up  that  which  I 
had  resolved  to  do,  upon  grounds  which  I  conceived  to  be  right.* 

♦  In  September  1887  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Edward  Clodd — **A11  the 
propositions  laid  down  in  the  wicked  book,  which  was  so  well  anath- 
ematised a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  are  now  taught  in  the  text-books. 
What  a  droll  world  it  is!'* 

t  As  to  this  advice  not  to  publish  MarCs  Place  for  fear  of  misrepre- 
sentation on  the  score  of  morals,  he  said,  in  criticising  an  attack  of 


i863  MAN'S  PLACE  IN  NATURE  219 

So  the  book  came  out;  and  I  must  do  my  friend  the  justice  to 
say  that  his  forecast  was  completely  justified.  The  Boreas  of 
criticism  blew  his  hardest  blasts  of  misrepresentation  and  ridi- 
cule for  some  years,  and  I  was  even  as  one  of  the  wicked.  In- 
deed, it  surprises  me  at  times  to  think  how  anyone  who  had 
sunk  so  low  could  since  have  emerged  into,  at  any  rate,  relative 
respectability.  Personally,  like  the  non-corvine  personages  in 
the  Ingoldsby  legend,  I  did  not  feel  "one  penny  the  worse." 
Translated  into  several  languages,  the  book  reached  a  wider 
public  than  I  had  ever  hoped  for ;  being  largely  helped,  I  imagine, 
by  the  Emulphine  advertisements  to  which  I  referred.  It  has 
had  the  honour  of  being  freely  utilised  without  acknowledgment 
by  writers  of  repute;  and  finally  it  achieved  the  fate,  which  is 
the  euthanasia  of  a  scientific  work,  of  being  inclosed  among  the 
rubble  of  the  foundations  of  later  knowledge,  and  forgotten. 

To  my  observation,  human  nature  has  not  sensibly  changed 
during  the  last  thirty  years.  I  doubt  not  that  there  are  truths  as 
plainly  obvious  and  as  generally  denied  as  those  contained  in 
Man's  Place  in  Nature,  now  awaiting  enunciation.  If  there  is 
a  young  man  of  the  present  generation  who  has  taken  as  much 
trouble  as  I  did  to  assure  himself  that  they  are  truths,  let  him 
come  out  with  them,  without  troubling  his  head  about  the  bark- 
ing of  the  dogs  of  St.  Ernulphus.  Veritas  prcevalehit — some 
day;  and  even  if  she  does  not  prevail  in  his  time,  he  himself 
will  be  all  the  better  and  wiser  for  having  tried  to  help  her.  And 
let  him  recollect  that  such  great  reward  is  full  payment  for  all 
his  labour  and  pains. 

The  following  letter  refers  to  the  newly  published  Man's 
Place  in  Nature,  Miss  H.  Darwin  had  suggested  a  couple 
of  corrections : — 

Jermyn  Street,  Feb.  25,  1863. 

My  dear  Darwin — Please  to  say  to  Miss  Henrietta  Minos 
Rhadamanthus  Darwin  that  I  plead  guilty  to  the  justice  of  both 
criticisms,  and  throw  myself  on  the  mercy  of  the  court. 

As  extenuating  circumstances  with  respect  to  indictment 
No.  I,  see  prefatory  notice.     Extenuating  circumstance  No.  2 

this  sort  made  upon  Darwin  in  the  Quarterly  for  July  1876  : — **  It 
seemed  to  me,  however,  that  a  man  of  science  has  no  raison  <Pitre  at 
all,  unless  he  is  willing  to  face  much  greater  risks  than  these  for  the 
sake  of  that  which  he  helieves  to  he  true  ;  and  further,  that  to  a  man 
of  science  such  risks  do  not  count  for  much— that  they  are  by  no 
means  so  serious  as  they  are  to  a  man  of  letters,  for  example.'* 


220  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

— that  I  picked  up  "  Atavism  "  in  Pritchard  years  ago,  and  as  it 
is  a  much  more  convenient  word  than  "  Hereditary  transmission 
of  variations,"  it  slipped  into  equivalence  in  my  mind,  and  I 
forgot  all  about  the  original  limitation. 

But  if  these  excuses  should  in  your  judgment  tend  to  aggra- 
vate my  offences,  suppress  'em  like  a  friend.  One  may  always 
hope  more  from  a  lady's  tender-heartedness  than  from  her  sense 
of  justice. 

Publisher  has  just  sent  to  say  that  I  must  g^ve  him  any  cor- 
rections for  second  thousand  of  my  booklet  immediately. 

Why  did  not  Miss  Etty  send  any  critical  remarks  on  that 
subject  by  the  same  post?  I  should  be  most  immensely  obliged 
for  them. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

During  this  period  of  special  work  at  the  anthropological 
side  of  the  Evolution  theory,  Huxley  made  two  important 
contributions  to  the  general  question. 

As  secretary  of  the  Geological  Society,  the  duty  of  de- 
livering the  anniversary  address  in  1862  fell  to  him  in  the 
absence  of  the  president,  Leonard  Homer,  who  had  been 
driven  by  ill-health  to  winter  in  Italy. 

The  object  at  which  he  aimed  appears  from  the  post- 
script of  a  brief  note  of  Feb.  19,  1862,  to  Hooker : — 

I  am  writing  the  body  of  the  address,  and  I  am  going  to 
criticise  Palaeontological  doctrines  in  general  in  a  way  that  will 
flutter  their  nerves  considerable. 

Darwin  is  met  everywhere  with  —  Oh  this  is  opposed  to 
palaeontology,  or  that  is  opposed  to  palaeontology — and  I  mean  to 
turn  round  and  ask,  "  Now,  Messieurs  les  Palaeontologues,  what 
the  devil  do  you  really  know  ?  " 

I  have  not  changed  sex,  although  the  postscript  is  longer 
than  the  letter. 

The  delivery  of  the  address  *  itself  on  February  21  is 
thus  described  by  Sir  Charles  Lyell  f  (Life  and  Letters,  ii. 

356):- 

Huxley  delivered   a  brilliant  crftical   discourse   on   what  * 
palaeontology  has  and  has  not  done,  and  proved  the  value  of 

♦  On  ** Geological  Contemporaneity"  (Co//,  Ess.  viii.  292). 

t  To  a  note  of  whose,  proposing  a  talk  over  the  subject,  Huxley 
replies  on  May  5,  '*  I  am  very  glad  you  find  something  to  think  about 
in  my  address.     That  is  the  best  of  all  praise." 


i862  WORKING  MEN'S  LECTURES  221 

negative  evidence,  how  much  the  progressive  development  sys- 
tem has  been  pushed  too  far,  how  little  can  be  said  in  favour  of 
Owen's  more  generalised  types  when  we  go  back  to  the  verte- 
brata  and  invertebrata  of  remote  ages,  the  persistency  of  many 
forms  high  and  low  throughout  time,  how  little  we  know  of  the 
beginning  of  life  upon  the  earth,  how  often  events  called  con- 
temporaneous in  Geology  are  applied  to  things  which,  instead 
of  coinciding  in  time,  may  have  happened  ten  millions  of  years 
apart,  etc. ;  and  a  masterly  sketch  comparing  the  past  and  present 
in  almost  every  class  in  zoology,  and  sometimes  of  botany  cited 
from  Hooker,  which  he  said  he  had  done  because  it  was  useful 
to  look  into  the  cellars  and  see  how  much  gold  there  was  there, 
and  whether  the  quantity  of  bullion  justified  such  an  enormous 
circulation  of  paper.  I  never  remember  an  address  listened  to 
with  such  applause,  though  there  were  many  private  protests 
against  some  of  his  bold  opinions. 

The  dinner  at  Willis's  was  well  attended;  I  should  think 
eighty  or  more  present  .  .  .  and  late  in  the  evening  Huxley 
made  them  merry  by  a  sort  of  mock-modest  speech. 

Jermyn  Street,  May  6,  1862. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  was  very  glad  to  get  your  note  about 
my  address.  I  profess  to  be  a  great  stoic,  you  know,  but  there 
are  some  people  from  whom  I  am  glad  to  get  a  pat  on  the  back. 
Still  I  am  not  quite  content  with  that,  and  I  want  to  know  what 
you  think  of  the  argument — ^whether  you  agree  with  what  I  say 
about  contemporaneity  or  not,  and  whether  you  are  prepared  to 
admit — as  I  think  your  views  compel  you  to  do — that  the  whole 
Geological  Record  is  only  the  skimmings  of  the  pot  of  life. 

Furthermore,  I  want  you  to  chuckle  with  me  over  the  notion 
I  find  a  great  many  people  entertain — ^that  the  address  is  dead 
against  your  views.  The  fact  being,  as  they  will  by  and  by 
wake  up  [to]  see  that  yours  is  the  only  hypothesis  which  is 
not  negatived  by  the  facts, — one  of  its  great  merits  being  that 
it  allows  not  only  of  indefinite  standing  still,  but  of  indefinite 
retrogression. 

I  am  going  to  try  to  work  the  whole  argument  into  an  in- 
telligible form  for  the  general  public  as  a  chapter  of  my  forth- 
coming "Evidence"*  (one  half  of  which  I  am  happy  to  say 
is  now  written),  so  I  shall  be  very  glad  of  any  criticisms  or 
hints. 

*  EvicUnce  as  to  Man^s  Place  in  Nature, 


222  I  IFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xv 

Since  I  saw  you — indeed,  from  the  following  Tuesday  on- 
wards— I  have  amused  myself  by  spending  ten  days  or  so  in  bed. 
I  had  an  unaccountable  prostration  of  strength  which  they  called 
influenza,  but  which,  I  believe,  was  nothing  but  some  obstruction 
in  the  liver. 

Of  course  I  can't  persuade  people  of  this,  and  they  will  have 
it  that  it  is  overwork.  I  have  come  to  the  conviction,  however, 
that  steady  work  hurts  nobody,  the  real  destroyer  of  hardwork- 
ing men  being  not  their  work,  but  dinners,  late  hours,  and  the 
universal  humbug  and  excitement  of  society. 

I  mean  to  get  out  of  all  that  and  keep  out  of  it. — Ever  yours 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  other  contribution  to  the  general  question  was  his 
Working  Men's  Lectures  for  1862.  As  he  writes  to  Dar- 
win on  October  10—"  I  can't  find  anything  to  talk  to  the 
working  men  about  this  year  but  your  book.  I  mean  to 
give  them  a  commentary  d  la  Coke  upon  Lyttleton." 

The  lectures  to  working  men  here  referred  to,  six  in 
number,  were  duly  delivered  once  a  week  from  November 
10  onwards,  and  published  in  the  form  of  as  many  little 
pamphlets.  Appearing  under  the  general  title,  "  On  our 
Knowledge  of  the  Causes  of  the  Phenomena  of  Organic 
Nature,"  they  wound  up  with  a  critical  examination  of  the 
portion  of  Mr.  Darwin's  work  On  the  Origin  of  Species,  in 
relation  to  the  complete  theory  of  the  causes  of  organic 
nature. 

Jkrmyn  Street,  Dfc.  2,  1862. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  send  you  by  this  post  three  of  my 
working  men's  lectures  now  in  course  of  delivery.  As  you  will 
see  by  the  prefatory  notice,  I  was  asked  to  allow  them  to  be 
taken  down  in  shordiand  for  the  use  of  the  audience,  but  I  have 
no  interest  in  them,  and  do  not  desire  or  intend  that  they 
should  be  widely  circulated. 

Some  time  hence,  may  be,  I  may  revise  and  illustrate  them, 
and  make  them  into  a  book  as  a  sort  of  popular  exposition  of 
your  views,  or  at  a^y  rate  of  my  version  of  your  views. 

There  really  is  nothing  new  in  them  nor  anything  worth 
your  attention,  but  if  in  glancing  over  them  at  any  time  you 
should  see  anything  to  object  to,  I  should  like  to  know. 

I  am  very  hard  worked  just  now — six  lectures  a  week,  and 
no  end  of  other  things — but  as  vigorous  as  a  three-year  old. 


i862  WORKING  MEN*S  LECTURES  223 

Somebody  told  me  you  had  been  ill,  but  I  hope  it  was  fiction, 
and  that  you  and  Mrs.  Darwin  and  all  your  belongings  are 
flourishing.— Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  reply,  Darwin  writes  on  December  10: — 

I  agree  entirely  with  all  your  reservations  about  accepting 
the  doctrine,  and  you  might  have  gone  further  with  perfect 
safety  and  truth.  .  .  . 

Touching  the  Natural  History  Review,  "  Do  inaugurate  a 
great  improvement,  and  have  pages  cut,  like  the  Yankees  do; 
I  will  heap  blessings  on  your  head." 

And  again,  December  18: — 

I  have  read  No.  IV.  and  V.  They  are  simply  perfect.  They 
ought  to  be  largely  advertised ;  but  it  is  very  good  in  me  to  say 
so,  for  I  threw  down  No.  IV.  with  this  reflection,  "  What  is  the 
good  of  my  writing  a  thundering  big  book,  when  everything  is 
in  this  green  little  book  so  despicable  for  its  size  ?  "  In  the  name 
of  all  that  is  good  and  bad  I  may  as  well  shut  up  shop  altogether. 

These  lectures  met  with  an  annoying  amount  of  suc- 
cess. They  were  not  cast  into  permanent  form,  for  he 
grudged  the  time  necessary  to  prepare  them  for  the  press. 
However,  he  gave  a  Mr.  Hardwicke  permission  to  take  them 
down  in  shorthand  as  delivered  for  the  use  of  the  audience. 
But  no  sooner  were  they  printed,  than  they  had  a  large  sale. 
Writing  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  early  in  the  following  month, 
he  says : — 

I  fully  meant  to  have  sent  you  all  the  successive  lectures  as 
they  came  out,  and  I  forward  a  set  with  all  manner  of  apologies 
for  my  delinquency.  I  am  such  a  'umble-minded  party  that  I 
never  imagined  the  lectures  as  delivered  would  be  worth  bring- 
ing out  at  all,  and  I  knew  I  had  no  time  to  work  them  out.  Now, 
I  lament  I  did  not  publish  them  myself  and  turn  an  honest  penny 
by  them  as  I  suspect  Hardwicke  is  doing.  He  is  advertising 
them  everywhere,  confound  him. 

I  wish  when  you  have  read  them  you  would  tell  me  whether 
you  think  it  would  be  worth  while  for  me  to  re-edit,  enlarge,  and 
illustrate  them  by  and  by. 

And  on  January  28  Sir  C.  Lyell  writes  to  him : — 


224 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xv 


I  do  grudge  Hardwicke  very  much  having  not  only  the  pub- 
lisher's but  the  author's  profits.  It  so  often  happens  that  popular 
lectures  designed  for  a  class  and  inspired  by  an  attentive  audi- 
ence's sympathy  are  better  than  any  writing  in  the  closet  for  the 
purpose  of  educating  the  many  as  readers,  and  of  remunerating 
the  publisher  and  author.  I  would  lose  no  time  in  considering 
well  what  steps  to  take  to  rescue  the  copyright  of  the  third 
thousand. 

As  for  the  value  of  the  work  thus  done  in  support  of 
Darwin's  theory,  it  is  worth  while  quoting  the  words  of  Lord 
Kelvin,  when,  as  President  of  the  Royal  Society  in  1894,  it 
fell  to  him  to  award  Huxley  the  Darwin  Medal : — 

To  the  world  at  large,  perhaps,  Mr.  Huxley's  share  in  mould- 
ing the  thesis  of  Natural  Selection  is  less  well  known  than  is 
his  bold  unwearied  exposition  and  defence  of  it  after  it  had 
been  made  public.  And,  indeed,  a  speculative  trifler,  revelling 
in  the  problems  of  the  "might  have  been,"  would  find  a  con- 
genial theme  in  the  inquiry  how  soon  what  we  now  call  "  Dar- 
winism "  would  have  met  with  the  acceptance  with  which  it  has 
met,  and  gained  the  power  which  it  has  gained,  had  it  not  been 
for  the  brilliant  advocacy  with  which  in  its  early  days  it  was 
expounded  to  all  classes  of  men. 

That  advocacy  had  one  striking  mark:  while  it  made  or 
strove  to  make  clear  how  deep  the  new  view  went  down,  and 
how  far  it  reach^,  it  never  shrank  from  trying  to  make  equally 
clear  the  limit  beyond  which  it  could  not  go. 


CHAPTER   XVI 
1860-1861 

The  letters  given  in  the  following  chapters  illustrate  the 
occupations  and  interests  of  the  years  1860  to  1863,  apart 
from  the  struggle  over  the  species  question. 

One  of  the  most  important  and  most  engrossing  was  the 
launching  of  a  scientific  quarterly  to  do  more  systematically 
and  thoroughly  what  had  been  done  since  1858  in  the  fort- 
nightly scientific  column  of  the  Saturday  Review.  Its  gene- 
sis is  explained  in  the  following  letter: — 

/ufy  17,  i860. 

My  dear  Hooker — Some  time  ago  Dr.  Wright  of  Dublin 
talked  to  me  about  the  Natural  History  Review,  which  I  believe 
to  a  great  extent  belongs  to  him,  and  wanted  me  to  join  in  the 
editorship,  provided  certain  alterations  were  made.  I  promised 
to  consider  the  matter,  and  yesterday  he  and  Greene  dined  with 
me,  and  I  learned  that  Haughton  and  Galbraith  were  out  of  the 
review — ^that  Harvey  was  likely  to  go — ^that  a  new  series  was  to 
beg^n  in  January,  with  Williams  and  Norgate  for  publishers 
over  here — that  it  was  to  become  an  English  and  not  a  Hi- 
bernian concern  in  fact — and  finally,  that  if  I  chose  to  join  as 
one  of  the  editors,  the  effectual  control  would  be  pretty  much 
in  my  own  hands.  Now,  considering  the  state  of  the  times,  and 
the  low  condition  of  natural  history  journalisation  (always  ex- 
cepting quarterly  Mic,  Jour,)  in  this  country  this  seems  to  me 
to  be  a  fine  opening  for  a  plastically  minded  young  man,  and  I 
am  decidedly  inclined  to  close  with  the  offer,  though  I  shall  get 
nothing  but  extra  work  by  it. 

To  limit  the  amount  of  this  extra  work,  however,  I  must  get 
co-editors,  and  I  have  written  to  Lubbock  and  to  Rolleston  (also 
plastically  minded  young  men)  to  see  if  they  will  join.  Now  up 
to  this  point  you  have  been  in  a  horrid  state  of  disgust,  because 

225 


226  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 

you  thought  I  was  going  to  ask  you  next  But  I  am  not,  for 
rejoiced  as  I  should  be  to  have  you,  I  know  you  have  heaps  of 
better  work  to  do,  and  hate  journalism. 

But  can  you  tell  me  of  any  plastic  young  botanist  who  would 
come  in  all  for  glory  and  no  pay,  though  I  think  pay  may  be  got 
if  the  concern  is  properly  worked.    How  about  Oliver  ? 

And  though  you  can't  and  won't  be  an  editor  yourself,  won't 
you  help  us  and  pat  us  on  the  back  ? 

The  tone  of  the  Review  will  be  mildly  cpiscopophagous,  and 
you  and  Darwin  and  Lyell  will  have  a  fine  opportunity  if  you 
wish  it  of  slaying  your  adversaries. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Several  of  his  elder  friends  tried  to  dissuade  him  from 
an  undertaking  which  would  inevitably  distract  him  from 
his  proper  work.  Sir  C.  Lyell  prophesied  (see  p.  217)  that 
all  the  work  would  drift  to  the  most  energetic  member 
of  the  staff,  and  Huxley  writes  to  Hooker,  August  2, 
i860:— 

Darwin  wrote  me  a  very  kind  expostulation  about  it,  telling 
me  I  ought  not  to  waste  myself  on  other  than  original  work.  In 
reply,  however,  I  assured  him  that  I  must  waste  myself  willy- 
nilly,  and  that  the  Review  was  only  a  save-all. 

The  more  I  think  of  it  the  more  it  seems  to  me  it  ought  to 
answer  if  properly  conducted,  and  it  ought  to  be  of  great  use. 

The  first  number  appeared  in  January  1861.  Writing 
on  the  6th,  Huxley  says : — 

It  is  pleasant  to  get  such  expressions  of  opinion  as  I  have 
had  from  Lyell  and  Darwin  about  the  Review.  They  make  me 
quite  hopeful  about  its  prosperity,  as  I  am  sure  we  shall  be  able 
to  do  better  than  our  first  number. 

It  was  not  long,  however,  before  Lyell's  prophecy  began 
to  come  true.    In  June  Huxley  writes : — 

It  is  no  use  letting  other  people  look  after  the  journal.  I  find 
unless  I  revise  every  page  of  it,  it  goes  wrong. 

But  in  July  1863  he  definitely  ceased  to  contribute : — 

I  did  not  foresee  all  this  crush  of  work,  (he  writes)  when 
the  Review  was  first  started,  or  I  should  not  have  pledged  myself 
to  any  share  in  supplying  it.    (Moreover,  with  the  appointment 


i86o  LADIES  AND   THE  LEARNED  SOCIETIES 


227 


of  paid  editors  that  .year,  it  seemed  to  him)  that  the  working 
editors  with  the  credit  and  the  pay  must  take  the  responsibility 
of  all  the  commissariat  of  the  Review  upon  their  shoulders. 

Two  years  later,  in  1865,  the  Review  came  to  an  end. 
As  Mr.  Murray,  the  publisher,  remarked,  quarterlies  did  not 
pay;  and  this  quarterly  became  still  more  financially  un- 
sound after  the  over-worked  volunteers,  who  both  edited 
and  contributed,  gave  place  to  paid  editors. 

But  Huxley  was  not  satisfied  with  one  defeat.  The 
quarterly  scheme  had  failed;  he  now  tried  if  he  could  not 
serve  science  better  by  returning  to  a  more  frequent  and 
more  popular  form  of  periodical.  From  1863  to  1866  he 
was  concerned  with  the  Reader,  a  weekly  issue ;  *  but  this 
also  was  too  heavy  a  burden  to  be  borne  in  addition  to  his 
other  work.  However,  the  labour  expended  in  these  ven- 
tures was  not  wholly  thrown  away.  The  experience  thus 
gained  at  last  enabled  the  present  Sir  Norman  Lockyer,  who 
acted  as  science  editor  for  the  Reader,  to  realise  what  had 
so  long  been  aimed  at  by  the  establishment  of  Nature  in 
1869. 

Apart  from  his  contributions  to  the  species  question  and 
the  foundation  of  a  scientific  review,  Huxley  published  in 
i860  only  two  special  monographs  ("  On  Jacare  and  Cai- 
man," and  "  On  the  Mouth  and  Pharynx  of  the  Scorpion," 
already  mentioned  as  read  in  the  previous  year),  but  he  read 
"  Further  Observations  on  Pyrosoma  "  at  the  Linnean  So- 
ciety, and  was  busy  with  paleontological  work,  the  results 
of  which  appeared  in  three  papers  the  following  year,  the 
most  important  of  which  was  the  Memoir  called  a  "  Pre- 
liminary Essay  on  the  Arrangement  of  the  Devonian 
Fishes,"  in  the  report  of  the  Geological  Survey,  "  which," 
says  Sir  M.  Foster,  "  though  entitled  a  Preliminary  Essay, 
threw  an  entirely  new  light  on  the  affinities  of  these  crea- 
tures, and,  with  the  continuation  published  later,  in  1866, 
still  remains  a  standard  work." 

The  question  of  the  admission  of  ladies  to  the  learned 

*  The  committee  also  included  Professor  Cairns,  F.  Galton,  W.  F. 
Pollock,  and  J.  Tyndall. 


228  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 

societies  was  already  being  mooted,  and  a  letter  to  Sir  C. 
Lyell  gives  his  ideas  thus  early  not  only  on  this  point,  but 
on  the  general  question  of  women's  education. 

March  17,  i860. 

My  dear  Sir  Charles — ^To  use  the  only  forcible  expression, 
I  "twig"  your  meaning  perfectly,  but  I  venture  to  think  the 
parable  does  not  apply.  For  the  Geological  Society  is  not,  to  my 
mind,  a  place  of  education  for  students,  but  a  place  of  discussion^ 
for  adepts ;  and  the  more  it  is  applied  to  the  former  purpose  the 
less  competent  it  must  become  to  fulfil  the  latter — its  primary 
and  most  important  object 

I  am  far  from  wiping  to  place  any  obstacle  in  the  way  of 
the  intellectual  advancement  and  development  of  women.  On 
the  contrary,  I  don't  see  how  we  are  to  make  any  permanent 
advancement  while  one-half  of  the  race  is  sunk,  as  nine-tenths 
of  women  are,  in  mere  ignorant  parsonese  superstitions ;  and  to 
show  you  that  my  ideas  are  practical  I  have  fully  made  up  my 
mind,  if  I  can  carry  out  my  own  plans,  to  give  my  daughters 
the  same  training  in  physical  science  as  their  brother  will  get, 
so  long  as  he  is  a  boy.  They,  at  any  rate,  shall  not  be  got  up 
as  man-traps  for  the  matrimonial  market.  If  other  people  would 
do  the  like  the  next  generation  would  see  women  fit  to  be  the 
companions  of  men  in  all  their  pursuits — ^though  I  don't  think 
that  men  have  anything  to  fear  from  their  competition.  But 
you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  other  people  won't  do  the  like, 
and  five-sixths  of  women  will  stop  in  the  doll  stage  of  evolution 
to  be  the  stronghold  of  parsondom,  the  drag  on  civilisation,  the 
degradation  of  every  important  pursuit  with  which  they  mix 
themselves — "  intrigues  "  in  politics,  and  "  friponnes  "  in  science. 

If  my  claws  and  beak  are  good  for  anything  they  shall  be 
kept  from  hindering  the  progress  of  any  science  I  have  to  do 
with. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Three  letters  to  Mr.  Spencer  show  that  he  had  been 
reading  and  criticising  the  proofs  of  the  First  Principles. 
With  regard  to  the  second  letter,  which  gives  reasons  for 
rejecting  Mr.  Spencer's  remarks  about  the  power  of  infla- 
tion in  birds  during  flight,  it  is  curious  to  note  Mr.  Spencer's 
reply : — 

How  oddly  the  antagonism  comes  out  even  when  you  are  not 
conscious  of  it  I    My  authority  was  Owen  I    I  heard  him  assign 


i86o  LETTERS  TO  SPENCER 


229 


this  cause  for  the  falling  of  wounded  birds  in  one  of  his  lectures 
at  the  College  of  Surgeons. 

14  Waverley  Place,  Sept,  3,  i860. 

My  dear  Spencer — I  return  your  proofs  by  this  post.  To 
my  mind  nothing  can  be  better  than  their  contents,  whether  in 
matter  or  in  manner,  and  as  my  wife  arrived,  independently,  at 
the  same  opinion,  I  think  my  judgment  is  not  one-sided. 

There  is  something  calm  and  dignified  about  the  tone  of  the 
whole  —  which  eminently  befits  a  philosophical  work  which 
means  to  live — ^and  nothing  can  be  more  clear  and  forcible  than 
the  argument. 

I  rejoice  that  you  have  made  a  beginning,  and  such  a  begin- 
ning— for  the  more  I  think  about  it  the  more  important  it  seems 
to  me  that  somebody  should  think  out  into  a  connected  system 
the  loose  notions  that  are  floating  about  more  or  less  distinctly 
in  all  the  best  minds. 

It  seems  as  if  all  the  thoughts  in  what  you  have  written  were 
my  own,  and  yet  I  am  conscious  of  the  enormous  difference  your 
presentation  of  them  makes  in  my  intellectual  state.  One  is 
thought  in  the  state  of  hemp  yarn,  and  the  other  in  the  state  of 
rope.  Work  away,  then,  excellent  rope-maker,  and  make  us 
more  ropes  to  hold  on  against  the  devil  and  the  parsons. 

For  myself  I  am  absorbed  in  dogs — gone  to  the  dogs  in  fact 
— ^having  been  occupied  in  dissecting  them  for  the  last  fort- 
night. You  do  not  say  how  your  health  is. — Ever  yours  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

Sipu  19,  i860. 

My  dear  Spencer — ^You  will  forgive  the  delay  which  has 
occurred  in  forwarding  your  proof  when  I  tell  you  that  we  have 
lost  our  poor  little  son,  our  pet  and  hope.  You  who  knew  him 
well,  and  know  how  his  mother's  heart  and  mine  were  wrapped 
up  in  him,  will  understand  how  great  is  our  affliction.  He  was 
attacked  with  a  bad  form  of  scarlet  fever  on  Thursday  night, 
and  on  Saturday  night  effusion  on  the  brain  set  in  suddenly  and 
carried  him  off  in  a  couple  of  hours.  Jessie  was  taken  ill  on 
Friday,  but  has  had  the  disease  quite  lightly,  and  is  doing  well. 
The  baby  has  escaped.  So  end  many  hopes  and  plans — sadly 
enough,  and  yet  not  altogether  bitterly.  For  as  the  little  fellow 
was  our  greatest  joy  so  is  the  recollection  of  him  an  enduring 
consolation.  It  is  a  heavy  payment,  but  I  would  buy  the  four 
years  of  him  again  at  the  same  price.    My  wife  bears  up  bravely. 

I  have  read  your  proofs  at  intervals,  and  you  must  not  sup- 


230 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 


pose  they  have  troubled  me.  On  the  contrary  they  were  at  times 
the  only  things  I  could  attend  to.  I  agree  in  the  spirit  of  the 
whole  perfectly.  On  some  matters  of  detail  I  had  doubts  which 
I  am  not  at  present  clear-headed  enough  to  think  out. 

The  only  thing  I  object  to  in  toto  is  the  illustration  which  I 
have  marked  at  p.  24.  It  is  physically  impossible  that  a  bird's 
air-cells  should  be  distended  with  air  during  flight,  unless  the 
structure  of  the  parts  is  in  reality  different  from  anything  which 
anatomists  at  present  know.  Blowing  into  the  tradiea  is  not  to 
the  point.  A  bird  cannot  blow  into  its  own  trachea,  and  it  has 
no  mechanism  for  performing  a  corresponding  action. 

A  bird's  chest  is  essentially  a  pair  of  bellows  in  which  the 
sternum  during  rest  and  the  back  during  flight  act  as  movable 
wall.  The  air  cells  may  all  be  represented  as  soft-walled  bags 
opening  freely  into  the  bellows — ^there  being,  so  far  as  anatomists 
yet  know,  no  valves  or  corresponding  contrivances  anywhere 
except  at  the  glottis,  which  corresponds  with  the  nozzle  and  air 
valve  both,  of  our  bellows.  But  the  glottis  is  always  opened 
when  the  chest  is  dilated  at  each  inspiration.  How  then  can 
the  air  in  any  air-cell  be  kept  at  a  higher  tension  than  the  sur- 
rounding atmosphere? 

Hunter  experimented  on  the  uses  of  the  air  sacs,  I  know, 
but  I  have  not  his  works  at  hand.  It  may  be  that  opening  one 
of  the  air-cells  interferes  with  flight,  but  I  hold  it  very  difficult 
to  conceive  that  the  interference  can  take  place  in  the  way  you 
suppose.  How  on  earth  is  a  lark  to  sing  for  ten  minutes  together 
if  the  air-cells  are  to  be  kept  distended  all  the  while  he  is  up  in 
the  air  ? 

At  any  rate  twenty  other  illustrations  will  answer  your  pur- 
pose as  well,  so  I  would  not  select  one  which  may  be  assailed 
by  a  carping  fellow  like — ^Yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Oct.  10,  i860. 

My  dear  Spencer  *~"  A  wilful  man  must  have  his  way," 
and  if  you  won't  let  me  contribute  towards  the  material  guar- 
antees for  the  success  of  your  book,  I  must  be  content  to  add 
twelve  shillings*  worth  of  moral  influence  to  that  I  already  meant 
to  exert  per  annum  in  its  favour. 

I  shall  be  most  glad  henceforth,  as  ever,  to  help  your  great 

♦  This  was  written  at  the  time  when  Mr.  Spencer  had  issued  a 
notice  of  discontinuance,  and  when  measures  were  being  taken  to  pre- 
vent it. 


i86o  FRIENDSHIP  WITH   HOOKER 


231 


undertaking  in  any  way  I  can.  The  more  I  contemplate  its 
issues  the  more  important  does  it  seem  to  me  to  be,  and  I  assure 
you  that  I  look  upon  its  success  as  the  business  of  all  of  us.  So 
that  if  it  were  not  a  pleasure  I  should  feel  it  a  duty  to  "  push 
behind''  as  hard  as  I  can. 

Have  you  seen  this  quarter's  Westminster?  The  opening 
article  on  "  Neo-Christianity  "  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
essays  in  its  way  I  have  ever  read.  I  suppose  it  must  be  New- 
man's. The  Review  is  terribly  unequal,  some  of  the  other  arti- 
cles being  absolutely  ungrammatically  written.  What  a  pity  it 
is  it  cannot  be  thoroughly  organised. 

My  wife  is  a  little  better,  but  she  is  terribly  shattered.  By 
the  time  you  come  back  we  shall,  I  hope,  have  reverted  from  our 
present  hospital  condition  to  our  normal  arrangements,  but  in 
any  case  we  shall  be  glad  to  see  you. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  following  is,  I  think,  the  first  reference  to  his 
fastidiousness  in  the  literary  expression  and  artistic  com- 
pleteness of  his  work.  As  he  said  in  an  after-dinner  speech 
at  a  meeting  in  aid  of  the  Literary  Fund,  "  Science  and 
literature  are  not  two  things,  but  two  sides  of  one  thing." 
Anything  that  was  to  be  published  he  subjected  to  repeated 
revision.  And  thus,  apologising  to  Hooker  for  his  absence, 
he  writes  (August  2,  i860) — 

I  was  sorry  to  have  to  send  an  excuse  by  Tyndall  the  other 
day,  but  I  found  I  must  finish  the  Pyrosoma  paper,  and  all  last 
Tuesday  was  devoted  to  it,  and  I  fear  the  next  after  will  have 
the  like  fate. 

It  constantly  becomes  more  and  more  difficult  to  me  to  finish 
things  satisfactorily. 

To  Hooker  also  he  writes  a  few  days  later : — 

I  hope  your  ear  is  better;  take  care  of  yourself,  there's  a 
good  fellow.  I  can't  do  without  you  these  twenty  years.  We 
have  a  devil  of  a  lot  to  do  in  the  way  of  smiting  the  Amalekites. 

Between  two  men  who  seldom  spoke  of  their  feelings, 
but  let  constant  intercourse  attest  them,  these  words  show 
more  than  the  practical  side  of  their  friendship,  their  com- 
munity of  aims  and  interests.  Quick,  strong-willed,  and 
determined  as  they  both  were,  the  fact  that  they  could  work 
16 


232  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 

together  for  over  forty  years  without  the  shadow  of  a  mis- 
understanding, presupposes  an  unusually  strong  friend- 
ship firmly  based  upon  mutual  trust  and  respect  as  well 
as  liking,  the  beginning  of  which  Sir  J.  Hooker  thus  de- 
scribes : — 

My  first  meeting  your  father  was  in  185 1,  shortly  after  his 
return  from  the  Rattlesnake  voyage  with  Captain  Stanley. 
Hearing  that  I  had  paid  some  attention  to  marine  zoology  dur- 
ing the  voyage  of  the  Antarctic  Expedition,  he  was  desirous 
of  showing  me  the  results  of  his  studies  of  the  Oceanic  Hy- 
drozoa,  and  he  sought  me  out  in  consequence.  This  and  the 
fact  that  we  had  both  embarked  in  the  Naval  service  in  the 
same  capacity  as  medical  officers  and  with  the  same  object  of 
scientific  research,  naturally  led  to  an  intimacy  which  was  un- 
disturbed by  a  shadow  of  a  misunderstanding  for  nearly  forty- 
five  following  years.  Curiously  enough,  our  intercourse  might 
have  dated  from  an  earlier  period  by  nearly  six  years  had  I 
accepted  an  appointment  to  the  Rattlesnake  offered  me  by  Cap- 
tain Stanley,  which,  but  for  my  having  arranged  for  a  journey 
to  India,  might  have  been  accepted. 

Returning  to  the  purpose  of  our  interview,  the  researches 
Mr.  Huxley  laid  before  me  were  chiefly  those  on  the  Salpae,  a 
much  misunderstood  group  of  marine  Hydrozoa.  Of  these  I 
had  amused  myself  with  making  drawings  during  the  long  and 
often  weary  months  passed  at  sea  on  board  the  Erebus,  but  hav- 
ing other  subjects  to  attend  to,  I  had  made  no  further  study  of 
them  than  as  consumers  of  the  vegetable  life  (Diatoms)  of  the 
Antarctic  Ocean.  Hence  his  observations  on  their  life-history, 
habits,  and  affinities  were  on  almost  all  points  a  revelation  to 
me,  and  I  could  not  fail  to  recognise  in  their  author  all  the 
qualities  possessed  by  a  naturalist  of  commanding  ability,  in- 
dustry, and  power  of  exposition.  Our  interviews,  thus  com- 
menced, soon  ripened  into  a  friendship,  which  led  to  an  arrange- 
ment for  a  monthly  meeting,  and  in  the  informal  establishment 
of  a  club  of  nine,  the  other  members  of  which  were,  Mr.  Busk. 
Dr.  Frankland,  Mr.  Hirst,  Sir  J.  Lubbock,  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer, 
Dr.  Tyndall,  and  Mr.  Spottiswoode. 

Just  a  month  after  this  letter  to  his  friend,  the  same 
year  which  had  first  brought  Huxley  public  recognition 
outside  his  special  sphere  brought  him  also  the  greatest 
sorrow  perhaps  of  his  whole  life.     I  have  already  spoken 


i860  the  standard  OF   BELIEF 


233 


of  the  sudden  death  of  the  little  son  in  whom  so  much  of 
his  own  and  his  wife's  happiness  was  centred.  The  sudden- 
ness of  the  blow  made  it  all  the  more  crushing,  and  the 
mental  strain,  intensified  by  the  sight  of  his  wife's  incon- 
solable grief,  brought  him  perilously  near  a  complete  break- 
down. But  the  birth  of  another  son,  on  December  11,  gave 
the  mother  some  comfort;  and  as  the  result  of  a  friendly 
conspiracy  between  her  and  Dr.  Tyndall,  Huxley  himself 
was  carried  oflf  for  a  week's  climbing  in  Wales  between 
Christmas  and  the  New  Year. 

His  reply  to  a  long  letter  of  sympathy  in  which  Charles 
Kingsley  set  forth  the  grounds  of  his  own  philosophy  as  to 
the  ends  of  life  and  the  hope  of  immortality,  affords  insight 
into  the  very  depths  of  his  nature.  It  is  a  rare  outburst  at 
a  moment  of  intense  feeling,  in  which,  more  completely  than 
in  almost  any  other  writing  of  his,  intellectual  clearness  and 
moral  fire  are  to  be  seen  uniting  in  a  veritable  passion  for 
truth  :— 

14  Waverley  Place,  Sept  23,  i860. 

My  dear  Kingsley — I  cannot  sufficiently  thank  you,  both  on 
my  wife's  account  and  my  own,  for  your  long  and  frank  letter, 
and  for  all  the  hearty  sympathy  which  it  exhibits — and  Mrs. 
Kingsley  will,  I  hope,  believe  that  we  are  no  less  sensible  of 
her  kind  thought  of  us.  To  myself  your  letter  was  especially 
valuable,  as  it  touched  upon  what  I  thought  even  more  than 
upon  what  I  said  in  my  letter  to  you.  My  convictions,  positive 
and  negative,  on  all  the  matters  of  which  you  speak,  are  of  long 
and  slow  growth  and  are  firmly  rooted.  But  the  great  blow 
which  fell  upon  me  seemed  to  stir  them  to  their  foundation, 
and  had  I  lived  a  couple  of  centuries  earlier  I  could  have  fancied 
a  devil  scoffing  at  me  and  them — and  asking  me  what  profit  it 
was  to  have  stripped  myself  of  the  hopes  and  consolations  of 
the  mass  of  mankind?  To  which  my  only  reply  was  and  is 
—Oh  devil !  truth  is  better  than  much  profit.  I  have  searched 
over  the  grounds  of  my  belief,  and  if  wife  and  child  and  name 
and  fame  were  all  to  be  lost  to  me  one  after  the  other  as  the 
penalty,  still  I  will  not  lie. 

And  now  I  feel  that  it  is  due  to  you  to  speak  as  frankly  as 
you  have  done  to  me.  An  old  and  worthy  friend  of  mine  tried 
some  three  or  four  years  ago  to  bring  us  together — ^because,  as 
he  said,  you  were  the  only  man  who  would  do  me  any  good. 


234 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 


Your  letter  leads  me  to  think  he  was  right,  though  not  perhaps 
in  the  sense  he  attached  to  his  own  words. 

To  begin  with  the  great  doctrine  you  discuss.  I  neither  deny 
nor  affirm  the  immortality  of  man.  I  see  no  reason  for  believing 
in  it,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  no  means  of  disproving  it. 

Pray  understand  that  I  have  no  a  priori  objections  to  the 
doctrine.  No  man  who  has  to  deal  daily  and  hourly  with  nature 
can  trouble  himself  about  a  priori  difficulties.  Give  me  such 
evidence  as  would  justify  me  in  believing  anything  else,  and  I 
will  believe  that  Why  should  I  not  ?  It  is  not  half  so  wonder- 
ful as  the  conservation  of  force,  or  the  indestructibility  of 
matter.  Whoso  clearly  appreciates  all  that  is  implied  in  the 
falling  of  a  stone  can  have  no  difficulty  about  any  doctrine  simply 
on  account  of  its  marvellousncss.  But  the  longer  I  live,  the 
more  obvious  it  is  to  me  that  the  most  sacred  act  of  a  man's 
life  is  to  say  and  to  feel,  "  I  believe  such  and  such  to  be  true." 
All  the  greatest  rewards  and  all  the  heaviest  penalties  of  exist- 
ence cling  about  that  act.  The  universe  is  one  and  the  same 
throughout;  and  if  the  condition  of  my  success  in  unravelling 
some  little  difficulty  of  anatomy  or  physiology  is  that  I  shall 
rigorously  refuse  to  put  faith  in  that  which  does  not  rest  on 
sufficient  evidence,  I  cannot  believe  that  the  great  mysteries 
of  existence  will  be  laid  open  to  me  on  other  terms.  It  is  no  use 
to  talk  to  me  of  analogies  and  probabilities.  I  know  what  I 
mean  when  I  say  I  believe  in  the  law  of  the  inverse  squares, 
and  I  will  not  rest  my  life  and  my  hopes  upon  weaker  convic- 
tions.   I  dare  not  if  I  would. 

Measured  by  this  standard,  what  becomes  of  the  doctrine  of 
immortality  ? 

You  rest  in  your  strong  conviction  of  your  personal  exist- 
ence, and  in  the  instinct  of  the  persistence  of  that  existence 
which  is  so  strong  in  you  as  in  most  men. 

To  me  this  is  as  nothing.  That  my  personality  is  the  surest 
thing  I  know — may  be  true.  But  the  attempt  to  conceive  what 
it  is  leads  me  into  mere  verbal  subtleties.  I  have  champed  up 
all  that  chaff  about  the  ego  and  the  non-ego,  about  noumena 
and  phenomena,  and  all  the  rest  of  it,  too  often  not  to  know  that 
in  attempting  even  to  think  of  these  questions,  the  human  intel- 
lect flounders  at  once  out  of  its  depth. 

It  must  be  twenty  years  since,  a  boy,  I  read  Hamilton's  essay 
on  the  unconditioned,  and  from  that  time  to  this,  ontological 
speculation  has  been  a  folly  to  me.  When  Mansel  took  up 
Hamilton's  argument  on  the  side  of  orthodoxy  (!)  I  said  he  re- 


i86o  THE  DOCTRINE   OF   IMMORTALITY  235 

minded  me  of  nothing  so  much  as  the  man  who  is  sawing  off  the 
sign  on  which  he  is  sitting,  in  Hogarth's  picture.  But  this  by 
the  way. 

I  cannot  conceive  of  my  personality  as  a  thing  apart  from 
the  phenomena  of  my  life.  When  I  try  to  form  such  a  concep- 
tion I  discover  that,  as  Coleridge  would  have  said,  I  only  hypos- 
tatise  a  word,  and  it  alters  nothing. if,  with  Fidhte,  I  suppose 
the  universe  to  be  nothing  but  a  manifestation  of  my  personality. 
I  am  neither  more  nor  less  eternal  than  I  was  before. 

Nor  does  the  infinite  difference  between  myself  and  the 
animals  alter  the  case.  I  do  not  know  whether  the  animals  per- 
sist after  they  disappear  or  not.  I  do  not  even  know  whether 
the  infinite  difference  between  us  and  them  may  not  be  com- 
pensated by  their  persistence  and  my  cessation  after  apparent 
death,  just  as  the  humble  bulb  of  an  annual  lives,  while  the 
glorious  flowers  it  has  put  forth  die  away. 

Surely  it  must  be  plain  that  an  ingenious  man  could  specu- 
late without  end  on  both  sides,  and  find  analogies  for  all  his 
dreams.  Nor  does  it  help  me  to  tell  me  that  the  aspirations  of 
mankind — ^that  my  own  highest  aspirations  even — ^lead  me 
towards  the  doctrine  of  immortality.  I  doubt  the  fact,  to  begin 
with,  but  if  it  be  so  even,  what  is  this  but  in  grand  words  asking 
me  to  believe  a  thing  because  I  like  it. 

Science  has  taught  to  me  the  opposite  lesson.  She  warns 
me  to  be  careful  how  I  adopt  a  view  which  jumps  with  my  pre- 
conceptions, and  to  require  stronger  evidence  for  such  belief 
than  for  one  to  which  I  was  previously  hostile. 

My  business  is  to  teach  my  aspirations  to  conform  them- 
selves to  fact,  not  to  try  and  make  facts  harmonise  with  my 
aspirations. 

Science  seems  to  me  to  teach  in  the  highest  and  strongest 
manner  the  great  truth  which  is  embodied  in  the  Christian  con- 
ception of  entire  surrender  to  the  will  of  God.  Sit  down  before 
fact  as  a  little  child,  be  prepared  to  give  up  every  preconceived 
notion,  follow  humbly  wherever  and  to  whatever  abysses  nature 
leads,  or  you  shall  learn  nothing.  I  have  only  begun  to  learn 
content  and  peace  of  mind  since  I  have  resolved  at  all  risks  to 
do  this. 

There  are,  however,  other  arguments  commonly  brought 
forward  in  favour  of  the  immortality  of  man,  which  are  to  my 
mind  not  only  delusive  but  mischievous.  The  one  is  the  notion 
that  the  moral  government  of  the  world  is  imperfect  without  a 
system  of  future  rewards  and  punishments.    The  other  is:  that 


236  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 

such  a  system  is  indispensable  to  practical  morality.  I  believe 
that  both  these  dogmas  are  very  mischievous  lies. 

With  respect  to  the  first,  I  am  no  optimist,  but  I  have  the 
firmest  belief  that  the  Divine  Government  (if  we  may  use  such 
a  phrase  to  express  the  sum  of  the  "customs  of  matter")  is 
wholly  just.  The  more  I  know  intimately  of  the  lives  of  other 
men  (to  say  nothing  of  my  own),  the  more  obvious  it  is  to  me 
that  the  wicked  does  not  flourish  nor  is  the  righteous  punished. 
But  for  this  to  be  clear  we  must  bear  in  mind  what  almost  all 
forget,  that  the  rewards  of  life  are  contingent  upon  obedience 
to  the  whole  law — physical  as  well  as  moral — and  that  moral 
obedience  will  not  atone  for  physical  sin,  or  tnce  versa. 

The  ledger  of  the  Almighty  is  strictly  kept,  and  every  one 
of  us  has  the  balance  of  his  operations  paid  over  to  him  at  the 
end  of  every  minute  of  his  existence. 

Life  cannot  exist  without  a  certain  conformity  to  the  sur- 
rounding universe — ^that  conformity  involves  a  certain  amount 
of  happiness  in  excess  of  pain.  In  short,  as  we  live  we  are  paid 
for  living. 

And  it  is  to  be  recollected  in  view  of  the  apparent  discrep- 
ancy between  men's  acts  and  their  rewards  that  Nature  is  juster 
than  we.  She  takes  into  account  what  a  man  brings  with  him 
into  the  world,  which  human  justice  cannot  do.  If  I,  bom  a 
bloodthirsty  and  savage  brute,  inheriting  these  qualities  from 
others,  kill  you,  my  fellow-men  will  very  justly  hang  me,  but 
I  shall  not  be  visited  with  the  horrible  remorse  which  would 
be  my  real  punishment  if,  my  nature  being  higher,  I  had  done 
the  same  thing. 

The  absolute  justice  of  the  system  of  things  is  as  clear  to  me 
as  any  scientific  fact.  The  gravitation  of  sin  to  sorrow  is  as 
certain  as  that  of  the  earth  to  the  sun,  and  more  so — for  experi- 
mental proof  of  the  fact  is  within  reach  of  us  all — nay,  is  before 
us  all  in  our  own  lives,  if  we  had  but  the  eyes  to  see  it. 

Not  only,  then,  do  I  disbelieve  in  the  need  for  compensation, 
but  I  believe  that  the  seeking  for  rewards  and  punishments  out 
of  this  life  leads  men  to  a  ruinous  ignorance  of  the  fact  that 
their  inevitable  rewards  and  punishments  are  here. 

If  the  expectation  of  hell  hereafter  can  keep  me  from  evil- 
doing,  surely  a  fortiori  the  certainty  of  hell  now  will  do  so  ?  If 
a  man  could  be  firmly  impressed  with  the  belief  that  stealing 
damaged  him  as  much  as  swallowing  arsenic  would  do  (and  it 
does),  would  not  the  dissuasive  force  of  that  belief  be  greater 
than  that  of  any  based  on  mere  future  expectations  ? 


i860  the  doctrine  OF  IMMORTALItY 


237 


And  this  leads  me  to  my  other  point. 

As  I  stood  behind  the  coffin  of  my  little  son  the  other  day, 
with  my  mind  bent  on  anything  but  disputation,  the  officiating 
minister  read,  as  a  part  of  his  duty,  the  words,  ''If  the  dead 
rise  not  again,  let  us  eat  and  drink,  for  to-morrow  we  die."  I 
cannot  tell  you  how  inexpressibly  tliey  shocked  me.  Paul  had 
neither  wife  nor  child,  or  he  must  have  known  that  his  alterna- 
tive involved  a  blasphemy  against  all  that  was  best  and  noblest 
in  human  nature.  I  could  have  laughed  with  scorn.  What! 
because  I  am  face  to  face  with  irreparable  loss,  because  I  have 
given  back  to  the  source  from  whence  it  came,  the  cause  of  a 
great  happiness,  still  retaining  through  all  my  life  the  blessings 
which  have  sprung  and  will  spring  from  that  cause,  I  am  to 
renounce  my  manhood,  and,  howling,  grovel  in  bestiality  ?  Why, 
the  very  apes  know  better,  and  if  you  shoot  their  young,  the 
poor  brutes  grieve  their  grief  out  and  do  not  immediately  seek 
distraction  in  a  gorge. 

Kicked  into  the  world  a  boy  without  guide  or  training,  or 
with  worse  than  none,  I  confess  to  my  shame  that  few  men  have 
drunk  deeper  of  all  kinds  of  sin  than  I.  Happily,  my  course 
was  arrested  in  time — ^before  I  had  earned  absolute  destruction 
— and  for  long  years  I  have  been  slowly  and  painfully  climbing, 
with  many  a  fall,  towards  better  things.  And  when  I  look  back, 
what  do  I  find  to  have  been  the  agents  of  my  redemption  ?  The 
hope  of  immortality  or  of  future  reward?  I  can  honestly  say 
that  for  these  fourteen  years  such  a  consideration  has  not  en- 
tered my  head.  No,  I  can  tell  you  exactly  what  has  been  at 
work.  Sartor  Resartus  led  me  to  know  that  a  deep  sense  of 
religion  was  compatible  with  the  entire  absence  of  theology. 
Secondly,  science  and  her  methods  gave  me  a  resting-place  in- 
dependent of  authority  and  tradition.  Thirdly,  love  opened  up 
to  me  a  view  of  the  sanctity  of  human  nature,  and  impressed 
me  with  a  deep  sense  of  responsibility. 

If  at  this  moment  I  am  not  a  worn-out,  debauched,  useless 
carcass  of  a  man,  if  it  has  been  or  will  be  my  fate  to  advance 
the  cause  of  science,  if  I  feel  that  I  have  a  shadow  of  a  claim 
on  the  love  of  those  about  me,  if  in  the  supreme  moment  when 
I  looked  down  into  my  boy's  grave  my  sorrow  was  full  of  sub- 
mission and  without  bitterness,  it  is  because  these  agencies  have 
worked  upon  me,  and  not  because  I  have  ever  cared  whether  my 
poor  personality  shall  remain  distinct  for  ever  from  the  All  from 
whence  it  came  and  whither  it  goes. 

And  thus,  my  dear  Kingsley,  you  will  understand  what  my 


238  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 

position  is.  I  may  be  quite  wrong,  and  in  that  case  I  know  I 
shall  have  to  pay  the  penalty  for  being  wrong.  But  I  can  only 
say  with  Luther,  "  Gott  helfe  mir,  Ich  kann  nichts  anders." 

I  know  right  well  that  99  out  of  100  of  my  fellows  would  call 
me  atheist,  infidel,  and  all  the  other  usual  hard  names.  As  our 
laws  stand,  if  the  lowest  thief  steals  my  coat,  my  evidence  (my 
opinions  being  known)  would  not  be  received  against  him.* 

But  I  cannot  help  it.  One  thing  people  shall  not  call  me 
with  justice  and  that  is — a  liar.  As  you  say  of  yourself,  I  too 
feel  that  I  lack  courage;  but  if  ever  the  occasion  arises  when 
I  am  bound  to  speak,  I  will  not  shame  my  boy. 

I  have  spoken  more  openly  and  distinctly  to  you  than  I  ever 
have  to  any  human  being  except  my  wife. 

If  you  can  show  me  that  I  err  in  premises  or  conclusion,  I 
am  ready  to  give  up  these  as  I  would  any  other  theories.  But  at 
any  rate  you  will  do  me  the  justice  to  believe  that  I  have  not 
reached  my  conclusions  without  the  care  befitting  the  momentous 
nature  of  the  problems  involved. 

And  I  write  this  the  more  readily  to  you,  because  it  is  clear 
to  me  that  if  that  great  and  powerful  instrument  for  good  or 
evil,  the  Church  of  England,  is  to  be  saved  from  being  shivered 
into  fragments  by  the  advancing  tide  of  science — an  event  I 
should  be  very  sorry  to  witness,  but  which  will  infallibly  occur 
if  men  like  Samuel  of  Oxford  are  to  have  the  guidance  of  her 
destinies — it  must  be  by  the  efforts  of  men  who,  like  yourself, 
see  your  way  to  the  combination  of  the  practice  of  the  Church 
with  the  spirit  of  science.  Understand  that  all  the  younger  men 
of  science  whom  I  know  intimately  are  essentially  of  my  way 
of  thinking.  (I  know  not  a  scoffer  or  an  irreligious  or  an  im- 
moral man  among  them,  but  they  all  regard  orthodoxy  as  you 
do  Brahmanism.)  Understand  that  this  new  school  of  the 
prophets  is  the  only  one  that  can  work  miracles,  the  only  one 
that  can  constantly  appeal  to  nature  for  evidence  that  it  is  right, 
and  you  will  comprehend  that  it  is  of  no  use  to  try  to  barricade 
us  with  shovel  hats  and  aprons,  or  to  talk  about  our  doctrines 
being  "  shocking." 

I  don't  profess  to  understand  the  logic  of  yourself,  Maurice, 
and  the  rest  of  your  school,  but  I  have  always  said  I  would 
swear  by  your  truthfulness  and  sincerity,  and  that  good  must 
come  of  your  efforts.  The  more  plain  this  was  to  me,  however, 
the  more  obvious  the  necessity  to  let  you  see  where  the  men  of 

*  The  law  with  respect  to  oaths  was  reformed  in  1869. 


i86o  LETTERS   TO   HOOKER 


239 


science  are  driving,  and  it  has  often  been  in  my  mind  to  write 
to  you  before. 

If  I  have  spoken  too  plainly  anywhere,  or  too  abruptly, 
pardon  me,  and  do  the  like  to  me. 

My  wife  thanks  you  very  much  for  your  volume  of  sermons. 
-Ever  yours  very  faithfully.  ^   ^   ^^^^^ 

A  letter  written  in  reply  to  the  suggestion  that  he 
should  carry  out  Hooker's  own  good  resolutions  of  keep- 
ing out  of  the  turmoil  of  life,  and  devoting  himself  to 
pure  science,  seems  to  indicate  in  its  tone  something  of 
the  stress  of  the  time  when  it  was  written — 

Jermyn  Street,  Z?^r.  19,  i860. 

My  dear  Hooker — What  with  one  thing  and  another,  I  have 
almost  forgotten  to  answer  your  note — and  first,  as  to  the  busi- 
ness matter.  .  .  .  Next  as  to  my  own  private  affairs,  the  young- 
ster is  "a  swelling  wisibly,"  and  my  wife  is  getting  on  better 
than  I  hoped,  though  not  quite  so  well  as  I  could  have  wished. 
The  boy's  advent  is  a  great  blessing  to  her  in  all  ways.  For 
myself  I  hardly  know  yet  whether  it  is  pleasure  or  pain.  The 
ground  has  gone  from  under  my  feet  once,  and  I  hardly  know 
how  to  rest  on  anything  again.  Irrational,  you  will  say,  but 
nevertheless  natural.  And  finally  as  to  your  resolutions,  my 
holy  pilgrim,  they  will  be  kept  about  as  long  as  the  resolutions 
of  other  anchorites  who  are  thrown  into  the  busy  world,  or  I 
won't  say  that,  for  assuredly  you  will  take  the  world  "  as  coolly 
as  you  can,"  and  so  shall  I.  But  that  coolness  amounts  to  the 
red  heat  of  properly  constructed  mortals. 

It  is  no  use  having  any  false  modesty  about  the  matter.  You 
and  I,  if  we  last  ten  years  longer,  and  you  by  a  long  while  first, 
will  be  the  representatives  of  our  respective  lines  in  this  country. 
In  that  capacity  we  shall  have  certain  duties  to  perform  to  our- 
selves, to  the  outside  world,  and  to  science.  We  shall  have  to 
swallow  praise  which  is  no  great  pleasure,  and  to  stand  multi- 
tudinous basting  and  irritations,  which  will  involve  a  good  deal 
of  unquestionable  pain.  Don't  flatter  yourself  that  there  is  any 
moral  chloroform  by  which  either  you  or  I  can  render  ourselves 
insensible  or  acquire  the  habit  of  doing  things  coolly.  It  is 
assuredly  of  no  great  use  to  tear  one's  self  to  pieces  before  one 
is  fifty.  But  the  alternative,  for  men  constructed  on  the  high 
pressure  tubular  boiler  principle,  like  ourselves,  is.  to  lie  still 


240 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 


and  let  the  devil  have  his  own  way.     And  I  will  be  torn  to 
pieces  before  I  am  forty  sooner  than  see  that. 

I  have  been  privately  trading  on  my  misfortunes  in  order  to 
get  a  little  peace  and  quietness  for  a  few  months.  If  I  can  help 
it  I  don't  mean  to  do  any  dining  out  this  winter,  and  I  have  cut 
down  Societies  to  the  minimimi  of  the  Geological,  from  which  I 
cannot  get  away. 

But  it  won't  do  to  keep  this  up  too  long.  By  and  by  one  must 
drift  into  the  stream  again,  and  then  there  is  nothing  for  it  but 
to  pull  like  mad  unless  we  want  to  be  run  down  by  every  collier. 

I  am  going  to  do  one  sensible  thing,  however,  viz.  to  rush 
down  to  Llanberis  with  Busk  between  Christmas  Day  and  New 
Year's  Day  and  get  my  lungs  full  of  hill-air  for  the  coming 
session. 

I  was  at  Down  on  Saturday  and  saw  Darwin.  He  seems 
fairly  well,  and  his  daughter  was  up  and  looks  better  than  I 
expected  to  see  her. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Meanwhile,  he  took  the  opportunity  to  make  the  child's 
birth  a  new  link  with  his  old  friend,  and  wrote  as  follows : — 

14  Waverlky  Place,  Jan.  3,  1861. 

My  dear  Hooker — If  I  had  nothing  else  to  write  about  I 
must  wish  you  a  Happy  New  Year  and  many  on  'em;  but,  in 
fact,  my  wife  and  I  have  a  great  favour  to  ask  of  you,  which 
is  neither  more  nor  less  than  to  stand  godfather  for  our  little 
son.  You  know  my  opinions  on  these  matters,  and  I  would  not 
ask  you  to  do  anything  I  would  not  do  myself,  so  if  you  consent, 
the  clerk  shall  tell  all  the  lies  for  you,  and  you  shall  be  asked 
to  do  nothing  else  than  to  help  devour  the  christening  feed,  and 
be  as  good  a  friend  to  the  boy  as  you  have  been  to  his  father. 

My  wife  will  have  the  youngster  christened,  although  I  am 
always  in  a  bad  temper  from  the  time  it  is  talked  about  until  the 
ceremony  is  over.  The  only  way  of  turning  the  farce  into  a 
reality  is  by  making  it  an  extra  bond  with  one's  friends.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  you  have  any  objection  to  say,  "  all  this  I  stead- 
fastly believe,"  even  by  deputy,  I  know  you  will  have  no  hesita- 
tion in  saying  so,  and  in  giving  me  as  frank  a  refusal  as  my 
request.* 

*  As  against  his  dislike  of  consenting  to  a  rite,  to  him  meaningless, 
he  was  moved  by  a  feeling  which  in  part  corresponded  to  Descartes* 
morale  par  provision, — in  part  was  an  acknowledgment  of  the  possi- 


i86i  LETTERS  TO   HOOKER  24 1 

Let  me  know  if  you  have  any  fault  to  find  with  the  new 
Review.  I  think  you  will  see  it  would  have  been  a  dreadful  busi- 
ness to  translate  all  the  German  titles  in  thei  bibliography.  I 
returned  from  a  ramble  about  Snowdon  with  Busk  and  Tyndall 
on  the  31st,  all  the  better.  My  wife  is  decidedly  improved, 
though  she  mends  but  slowly. 

Our  best  wishes  to  you  and  all  yours. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Any  fragments  from  the  rich  man's  table  for  the  next  No. 
of  NJiJiJ 

14  WwivERLBY  Place, /fli».  6,  1861. 

My  dear  Hooker — My  wife  and  I  were  very  pleased  to  get 

your  hearty  and  kind  acceptance  of  Godfathership.    We  shall 

not  call  upon  you  for  some  time,  I  fancy,  as  the  mistress  doesn't 

.  get  strong  very  fast.    However,  I  am  only  glad  she  is  well  as  she 

is.    She  came  down  yesterday  for  the  first  time. 

It  is  very  pleasant  to  get  such  expressions  of  opinion  as  I 
have  had  from  you,  Lyell,  and  Darwin  about  the  Review.  They 
make  me  quite  hopeful  about  its  prosperity,  as  I  am  sure  we 
shall  be  able  to  do  better  than  our  first  number. 

I  am  glad  you  liked  what  I  said  in  the  opening  of  my  article.* 
I  wish  not  to  be  in  any  way  confounded  with  the  cynics  who 
delight  in  degrading  man,  or  with  the  common  run  of  material- 
ists, who  think  mind  is  any  the  lower  for  being  a  function  of 
matter.    I  dislike  them  even  more  than  I  do  the  pietists. 

Some  of  these  days  I  shall  look  up  the  ape  question  again, 
and  go  over  the  rest  of  the  organisation  in  the  same  way.  But 
in  order  to  get  a  thorough  grip  of  the  question,  I  must  examine 

bilities  of  individual  development,  making  it  only  fair  to  a  child  to 
give  it  a  connection  with  the  official  spiritual  organisation  of  its  coun- 
try, which  it  could  either  ignore  or  continue  on  reaching  intellectual 
maturity. 

*  In  iht  Natural  History  Review  {i^ti^  p.  67). — **The  proof  of  his 
claim  to  independent  parentage  will  not  change  the  brutishness  of 
man's  lower  nature  ;  nor,  except  in  those  valet  souls  who  cannot  see 
greatness  in  their  fellow  because  his  father  was  a  cobbler,  will  the 
demonstration  of  a  pithecoid  pedigree  one  whit  diminish  man's  divine 
right  of  kingship  over  nature  ;  nor  lower  the  great  and  princely  dig- 
nity of  perfect  manhood,  which  is  an  order  of  nobility  not  inherited, 
but  to  be  won  by  each  of  us,  so  far  as  he  consciously  seeks  good  and 
avoids  evil,  and  puts  the  faculties  with  which  he  is  endowed  to  their 
fittest  use." 


242 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 


into  a  good  many  points  for  myself.    The  results,  when  they  do 
come  out,  will,  I  foresee,  astonish  the  natives. 

I  am  cold-proof,  and  all  the  better  for  the  Welsh  trip.  To 
say  truth,  I  was  just  on  the  edge  of  breaking  down  when  I  went. 
Did  I  ever  send  you  a  letter  of  mine  on  the  teaching  of  Natural 
History?  It  was  published  while  you  were  away,  and  I  forget 
whether  I  sent  it  or  not.  However,  a  copy  accompanies  this 
note.  .  .  . 

Of  course  there  will  be  room  for  your  review  and  welcome.  • 
I  have  put  it  down  and  reckon  on  it — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 
• 

Huxley  returned  from  the  trip  to  Wales  in  time  to  be 
with  his  wife  for  the  New  Year.  The  plot  she  had  made, 
with  Dr.  Tyndall  had  been  entirely  successful.  The  threat- 
ened breakdown  was  averted.  Wales  in  winter  was  as  good 
as  Switzerland.  Of  the  ascent  of  Snowdon  he  writes  on 
December  28 :  "  Both  Tyndall  and  I  voted  it  under  present 
circumstances  as  good  as  most  things  Alpine." 

His  wife,  however,  continued  in  very  weak  health.  She 
was  prostrated  by  the  loss  of  her  little  boy.  So  in  the 
middle  of  March  he  gladly  accepted  Mr.  Darwin's  invita- 
tion for  her  and  the  three  children  to  spend  a  fortnight 
in  the  quiet  of  his  house  at  Down,  where  he  himself  managed 
to  run  down  for  a  week  end.  "  It  appears  to  me,"  he 
writes  to  his  wife,  **  that  you  are  subjecting  poor  Darwin  to 
a  savage  Tennysonian  persecution.  I  shall  see  him  look- 
ing like  a  martyr  and  have  to  talk  double  science  next 
Sunday." 

In  April  another  good  friend,  Dr.  Bence  Jones,  lent  the 
invalid  his  house  at  Folkestone  for  three  months.  Unable 
even  to  walk  when  she  went  there,  her  recovery  was  a  slow 
business.  Huxley  ran  down  every  week ;  his  brother  George 
and  his  wife  also  were  frequent  visitors.  Meanwhile  he 
resolved  to  move  into  a  new  house,  in  order  that  she  might 
not  return  to  a  place  so  full  of  sorrowful  memories.  On 
May  30  he  effected  the  move  to  a  larger  house  not  half  a 
mile  away  from  Waverley  Place — ^26  Abbey  Place  (now 
23  Abercom  Place).  Here  also  Mrs.  Heathom  lived  for  the 
next  year,  my  grandfather,  over  seventy  as  he  was,  being 


i86i  DEATH   OF   HENSLOW 


243 


compelled  to  go  out  again  to  Australia  to  look  after  a  busi- 
ness venture  of  his  which  had  come  to  grief. 

Meantime  the  old  house  was  still  on  his  hands  for  an- 
other year.  Trying  to  find  a  tenant,  he  writes  on  May  21, 
1861:— 

I  met  J.  Tyndall  at  Ramsay's  last  night,  and  I  think  he  is 
greatly  inclined  to  have  the  house.  I  gave  him  your  message 
and  found  that  a  sneaking  kindness  for  the  old  house  actuated 
him  a  good  deal  in  wishing  to  take  it  It  is  not  a  bad  fellow, 
and  we  won't  do  him  much  on  the  fixtures. 

Eventually  Tyndall  and  his  friend  Hirst  established 
themselves  there. 

This  spring  Professor  Henslow,  Mrs.  Hooker's  father,  a 
botanist  of  the  first  rank,  and  a  man  extraordinarily  beloved 
by  all  who  came  in  contact  with  him,  was  seized  with  a 
mortal  illness,  and  lingered  on  without  hope  of  recovery 
through  almost  the  whole  of  April.    Huxley  writes : — 

Jermyn  Street,  April  \^  1861. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  am  very  much  grieved  and  shocked  by 
your  letter.  The  evening  before  last  I  heard  from  Busk  that 
your  father-in-law  had  been  ill,  and  that  you  had  been  to  see 
him,  and  I  meant  to  have  written  to  you  yesterday  to  inquire, 
but  it  was  driven  out  of  my  head  by  people  coming  here.  And 
then  I  had  a  sort  of  unreasonable  notion  that  I  should  see  you 
at  the  Linnaean  Council  to-day  and  hear  that  all  was  right  again. 
God  knows,  I  feel  for  you  and  your  poor  wife.  Knowing  what 
a  great  rift  the  loss  of  a  mere  undeveloped  child  will  leave  in 
one's  life,  I  can  faintly  picture  to  myself  the  great  and  irrep- 
arable vacuity  in  a  family  circle  caused  by  the  vanishing  out 
of  it  of  such  a  man  as  Henslow,  with  great  acquirements,  and 
that  great  calm  catholic  judgment  and  sense  which  always 
seemed  to  me  more  prominent  in  him  than  in  any  man  I  ever 
knew. 

He  had  intellect  to  comprehend  his  highest  duty  distinctly, 
and  force  of  character  to  do  it;  which  of  us  dare  ask  for  a 
higher  summary  of  his  life  than  that?  For  such  a  man  there 
can  be  no  fear  in  facing  the  great  unknown,  his  life  has  been 
one  long  experience  of  the  substantial  justice  of  the  laws  by 
which  this  world  is  governed,  and  he  will  calmly  trust  to  them 
still  as  he  lays  his  head  down  for  his  long  sleep. 


244  ^^^^  ^^  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 

You  know  all  these  things  as  well  as  I  do,  and  I  know  as  well 
as  you  do  that  such  thoughts  do  not  cure  heartache  or  assuage 
grief.  Such  maladies,  when  men  are  as  old  as  you  and  I  are,  are 
apt  to  hang  about  one  a  long  time,  but  I  find  that  if  they  are 
faced  and  accepted  as  part  of  our  fair  share  of  life,  a  great 
deal  of  good  is  to  be  got  out  of  them.  You  will  6nd  that  too, 
but  in  the  meanwhile  don't  go  and  break  yourself  down  with 
over  wear  and  tear.  The  heaviest  pull  comes  after  the  excite- 
ment of  a  catastrophe  of  this  kind  is  over. 

Believe  in  my  affectionate  sympathy  with  you,  and  that  I 

am,  my  dear  old  fellow,  yours  ever,  .     —  ^^   ^. 

^  '  ^  •     T.  H.  Huxley. 

And  again  on  the  i8th : — 

Many  thanks  for  your  two  letters.  It  would  be  sad  to  hear 
of  life  dragging  itself  out  so  painfully  and  slowly,  if  it  were  not 
for  what  you  tell  me  of  the  calmness  and  wisdom  with  which 
the  poor  sufferer  uses  such  strength  as  is  left  him. 

One  can  express  neither  wish  nor  hope  in  such  a  case.  With 
such  a  man  what  is  will  be  well.  All  I  have  to  repeat  is,  don't 
knock  yourself  up.  I  wish  to  God  I  could  help  you  in  some  way 
or  other  beyond  repeating  the  parrot  cry.  If  I  can,  of  course 
you  will  let  me  know. 

In  June  1861  a  jotting  in  his  notebook  records  that  he 
is  at  work  on  the  chick's  skull,  part  of  the  embryological 
work  which  he  took  up  vigorously  at  this  time,  and  at  once 
the  continuation  of  his  researches  on  the  Vertebrate  Skull, 
embodied  in  his  Croonian  lecture  of  1858,  and  the  beginning 
of  a  long  series  of  investigations  into  the  structure  of  birds. 
There  is  a  reference  to  this  in  a  very  interesting  letter  deal- 
ing chiefly  with  what  he  conceived  to  be  the  cardinal  point 
of  the  Darwinian  theory : — 

26  Abbey  Place,  S^t,  4,  1861. 

My  dear  Hooker — ^Yesterday  being  the  first  day  I  went  to 
the  Athenaeum  after  reading  your  note,  I  had  a  look  at,  and  a 
good  laugh  over,  the  Quarterly  article.    Who  can  be  the  writer? 

I  have  been  so  busy  studying  chicken  development,  a  difficult 
subject  to  which  I  had  long  ago  made  up  my  mind  to  devote  my 
first  spare  time,  that  I  have  written  you  no  word  about  your 
article  in  the  Gardener's  Chronicle,  I  quite  agree  with  the 
general  tendency  of  your  argument,  though  it  seems  to  me  that 


i86i  LETTER   TO   HOOKER 


245 


you  put  your  view  rather  too  strongly  when  you  seem  to  ques- 
tion the  position  "  that,  as  a  rule,  resemblances  prevail  over  dif- 
ferences "  between  parent  and  offspring.  Surely,  as  a  rule,  re- 
semblances do  prevail  over  differences,  though  I  quite  agree 
Mrith  you  that  the  latter  have  been  far  too  much  overlooked.  The 
great  desideratum  for  the  species  question  at  present  seems  to 
me  to  be  the  determination  of  the  law  of  variation.  Because 
no  law  has  yet  been  made  out,  Darwin  is  obliged  to  speak  of 
variation  as  if  it  were  spontaneous  or  a  matter  of  chance,  so 
that  the  bishops  and  superior  clergy  generally  (the  only  real 
atheists  and  believers  in  chance  left  in  the  world)  gird  at  him 
as  if  he  were  another  Lucretius. 

It  is  [in]  the  recognition  of  a  tendency  to  variation  apart 
from  the  variation  of  what  are  ordinarily  understood  as  ex- 
ternal conditions  that  Darwin's  view  is  such  an  advance 
on  Lamarck.  Why  does  not  somebody  go  to  work  experi- 
mentally, and  get  at  the  law  of  variation  for  some  one  species 
of  plant  ? 

What  a  capital  article  that  was  in  the  Athenaum  the  other 
day  apud  the  Schlagintweits.*    Don  Roderigo  is  very  wroth  at 

*  The  brothers  Schlagintweit  (four  of  whom  were  ultimately 
employed),  who  had  gained  some  reputation  for  their  work  on  the 
Physical  Geography  of  the  Alps,  were,  on  Humboldt's  recommenda- 
tion, despatched  by  the  East  India  Company  in  1854-55-56  to  the 
Dieccan,  and  especially  to  the  Himalayan  region  (where  they  were  the 
first  Europeans  to  cross  the  Kuenlun  Mountains),  in  order  to  correlate 
the  instruments  and  observations  of  the  several  magnetic  surveys  of 
India.  But  they  enlarged  the  scope  of  their  mission  by  professing  to 
correct  the  great  trigonometrical  survey,  while  the  contract  with  them 
was  so  loosely  drawn  up  that  they  had  practically  a  roving  commis- 
sion in  science,  to  make  researches  and  publish  the  results — up  to 
nine  volumes — in  all  manner  of  subjects,  which  in  fact  ranged  from 
the  surveying  work  to  ethnology,  and  were  crowned  by  an  additional 
volume  on  Buddhism  !  The  original  cost  to  the  Indian  Government 
was  estimated  at  ;f  1 5, 000;  the  allowances  from  the  English  Govern- 
ment during  the  inordinately  prolonged  period  of  arranging  and  pub- 
lishing materials,  including  payment  for  sixty  copies  of  each  volume, 
atlas,  and  so  forth,  as  well  as  personal  payments,  came  to  as  much 
more. 

Unfortunately  the  results  were  of  less  value  than  was  expected. 
The  attempt  to  correct  the  work  done  with  the  large  instruments  of 
the  trigonometrical  survey  by  means  of  far  smaller  instruments  was 
absurd ;  away  from  the  ground  covered  by  the  great  survey  the  fig- 
ures proved  to  be  very  inaccurate.     The  most  annoying  part  of  the 


246  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvi 

being  made  responsible  with  Sabine,  and  indeed  I  think  he  had 
little  enough  to  do  with  it. 

You  will  see  a  letter  from  him  in  this  week's  Atheruemn, — 
Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 


affair  was  that  it  absorbed  the  State  aid  which  might  have  been  given 
to  more  valuable  researches. 

The  Council  of  the  Royal  Society  had  been  consulted  as  to  the 
advisability  of  despatching  this  expedition  and  opposed  it,  for  there 
were  in  the  service  of  the  Company  not  a  few  men  admirably  qualified 
for  the  duty,  whose  scientific  services  had  received  scant  appreciation. 
Nevertheless,  the  expedition  started  after  all,  with  the  approval  of 
Colonel  Sabine,  the  president.  In  the  last  months  of  1866,  Huxley 
drew  up  for  the  Royal  Society  a  report  upon  the  scientific  value  of  the 
results  of  the  expedition. 


CHAPTER   XVII 

1861-1863 

It  has  been  seen  that  the  addition  of  journalistic  work 
in  science  to  the  mass  of  original  research  and  teaching 
work  upon  which  Huxley  was  engaged,  called  forth  a  re- 
monstrance from  both  Lyell  and  Darwin.  To  Hooker  it 
seemed  still  more  serious  that  he  was  dividing  his  allegiance, 
and  going  far  afield  in  philosophy,  instead  of  concentrating 
himself  upon  natural  science.    He  writes : — 

I  am  sorry  to  hear  that  you  are  so  poorly,  and  wish  I  could 
help  you  to  sit  down  and  work  quietly  at  pure  science.  You  have 
got  into  a  whirlpool,  and  should  strike  out  vigorously  at  the 
proper  angle,  not  attempt  to  breast  the  whole  force  of  the  cur- 
rent, nor  yet  give  in  to  it.  Do  take  the  counsel  of  a  quiet  looker 
on  and  withdraw  to  your  books  and  studies  in  pure  Natural  His- 
tory; let  modes  of  thought  alone.  You  may  make  a  very  good 
naturalist,  or  a  very  good  metaphysician  (of  that  I  know  noth- 
ing, don't  despise  me),  but  you  have  neither  time  nor  place 
for  both. 

However,  it  must  be  remarked  that  this  love  of  philoso- 
phy, not  recently  acquired  either,  was  only  part  of  the  pas- 
sion for  general  principles  underlying  the  facts  of  science 
which  had  always  possessed  him.  And  the  time  expended 
upon  it  was  not  directly  taken  from  the  hours  of  scientific 
work ;  he  would  read  in  bed  through  the  small  hours  of  the 
night,  when  sleep  was  slow  in  coming  to  him.  In  this  way 
he  got  through  an  immense  amount  of  philosophy  in  the 
course  of  several  years.  Not  that  he  could  "  state  the  views 
of  so  and  so  "  upon  any  given  question,  or  desired  such  kind 
of  knowledge ;  he  wished  to  find  out  and  compare  with  his 
17  247 


248  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

own  the  answers  which  other  thinkers  gave  to  the  problems 
which  interested  himself. 

A  gentler  reproof  of  this  time  touches  his  handwriting, 
which  was  never  of  the  most  legible,  so  that  his  foreign  cor- 
respondents in  particular  sometimes  complained.  Haeckel 
used  to  get  his  difficulties  deciphered  by  his  colleague 
Gegenbaur.  I  cannot  forbear  quoting  the  delicate  remon- 
strance of  Professor  Lacaze  du  Thiers,  and  the  flattering 
remedy  he  proposed : — 

March  14.  —  Je  lis  TAnglais  imprime,  mais  vos  Ventures 
anglaises  sent  si  rapides,  qu'il  m'est  quelquefois  difficile  de  m'en 
sortir.  On  me  dit  que  vous  ^crivez  si  bien  le  franqais  que  je 
crois  que  je  vous  lirais  bien  mieux  dans  ma  langue  I 

On  his  return  from  examining  at  Dublin,  he  again 
looked  over  proofs  for  Mr.  Spencer. 

Jkrmyn  Street,  Aug,  3,  1861. 

My  dear  Spencer  —  I  have  been  absent  on  a  journey  to 
Dublin  and  elsewhere*  nearly  all  this  week,  and  hence  your 
note  and  proof  did  not  reach  me  till  yesterday.  I  have  but  just 
had  time  to  glance  through  the  latter,  and  I  need  hardly  say  how 
heartily  I  concur  in  its  general  tenor.  I  have,  however,  marked 
one  or  two  passages  which  I  think  require  some  qualification. 
Then,  at  p.  272,  the  fact  that  the  vital  manifestations  of  plants 
depend  as  entirely  as  those  of  animals  upon  the  fall  towards 
stable  equilibrium  of  the  elements  of  a  complex  protein  com- 
pound is  not  sufficiently  prominent.  It  is  not  so  much  that  plants 
are  deoxidisers  and  animals  oxidisers,  as  that  plants  are  manu- 
facturers and  animals  consumers.  It  is  true  that  plants  manu- 
facture a  good  deal  of  non-nitrogenous  produce  in  proportion 
to  the  nitrogenous,  but  it  is  the  latter  which  is  chiefly  useful  to 
the  animal  consumer  and  not  the  former.  This  point  is  a  very 
important  one,  which  I  have  never  seen  clearly  and  distinctly 
put — the  prettiness  of  Dumas'  circulation  of  the  elements  having 
seduced  everybody. 

Of  course  this  in  no  way  affects  the  principle  of  what  you 
say.  The  statements  which  I  have  marked  at  p.  276  and  278 
should  have  their  authorities  given,  I  think.  I  should  hardly 
like  to  commit  myself  to  them  absolutely. 

You  will,  if  my  memory  does  not  mislead  me,  find  authority 
for  my  note  at  p.  283  in  Stephenson's  life.      I  think  old  Geo. 

♦  Visiting  Sir  Philip  Egerton  at  Oulton  Park. 


i86i  ANIMALS  AND   PLANTS 


249 


Stephenson  brought  out  his  views  at  breakfast  at  Sir  R.  Peel's 
when  Buckland  was  there. 

These  are  all  the  points  that  strike  me,  and  I  do  not  keep 
your  proof  any  longer  (I  send  it  by  the  same  post  as  this  note), 
because  I  fear  you  may  be  inconvenienced  by  the  delay. 

Tyndall  is  unfortunately  gone  to  Switzerland,  so  that  I  can- 
not get  you  his  comments.  Whether  he  might  have  picked  holes 
in  any  detail  or  not  I  do  not  know,  but  I  know  his  opinions  suf- 
ficiently well  to  make  sure  in  his  agreement  with  the  "general 
argument  In  fact  a  favourite  problem  of  his  is — Given  the 
molecular  forces  in  a  mutton  chop,  deduce  Hamlet  or  Faust 
therefrom.  He  is  confident  that  the  Physics  of  the  Future  will 
solve  this  easily. 

I  am  grieved  to  hear  such  a  poor  account  of  your  health ;  I 
believe  you  will  have  to  come  at  last  to  the  heroic  remedy  of 
matrimony,  and  if  "  gynopathy  "  were  a  mode  of  treatment  that 
could  be  left  off  if  it  did  not  suit  the  constitution,  I  should  de- 
cidedly recommend  it. 

But  it's  worse  than  opium-eating— once  b^gin  and  you  must 
go  on,  and  so,  though  I  ascribe  my  own  good  condition  mainly 
to  the  care  my  wife  takes  of  me,  I  dare  not  recommend  it  to 
you,  lest  perchance  you  should  get  hold  of  the  wrong  medicine. 

Beyond  spending  a  night  awake  now  and  then  I  am  in  very 
good  order,  and  I  am  going  to  spend  my  vacation  in  a  spasmodic 
eflfort  to  lick  the  Manual  into  shape  and  work  off  some  other 
arrears. 

My  wife  i§  very  fairly  well,  and,  I  trust,  finally  freed  from 
all  the  symptoms  which  alarmed  me  so  much.  I  dread  the  com- 
ing round  of  September  for  her  again,  but  it  must  be  faced. 

The  babbies  are  flourishing;  and  beyond  the  facts  that  we 
have  a  lunatic  neighbour  on  one  side  and  an  empty  house  on  the 
other,  that  it  has  cost  me  about  twice  as  much  to  get  into  my 
house  as  I  expected,  that  the  cistern  began  to  leak  and  spoil  a 
ceiling,  and  such  other  small  drawbacks,  the  new  house  is  a 
decided  success. 

I  forget  whether  I  gave  you  the  address,  which  is — 

26  Abbey  Place, 
St.  John's  Wood. 

You  had  better  direct  to  me  there,  as  after  the  loth  of  this 
month  I  shall  not  be  here  for  six  weeks. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 


250  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

October  shows  an  unusual  entry  in  his  diary;  the  sac- 
rifice of  a  working  evening  to  hear  Jenny  Lind  sing.  Fond 
though  he  was  of  music,  as  those  may  remember  who  ever 
watched  his  face  at  the  Sunday  evening  gatherings  in  Marl- 
borough Place  in  the  later  seventies,  when  there  was  sure 
to  be  at  least  a  little  good  music  or  singing  either  from 
his  daughters  or  some  of  the  guests,  he  seldom  could  spare 
the  time  for  concert-going  or  theatre-going,  and  the  occa- 
sional notes  of  his  bachelor  days,  "  to  the  opera  with  Spen- 
cer," had  ceased  as  his  necessary  occupations  grew  more 
engrossing. 

This  year  his  friend  Hooker  moved  to  Kew  to  act  as 
second  in  command  to  his  father.  Sir  William  Hooker,  the 
director  of  the  Botanical  Gardens.  This  move  made  meet- 
ings between  the  two  friends,  except  at  clubs  and  societies, 
more  difficult,  and  was  one  of  the  immediate  causes  of  the 
foundation  of  the  x  Club.  It  is  this  move  which  is  referred 
to  in  the  following  letters ;  the  "  poor  client "  being  the 
wife  of  an  old  messmate  of  his  on  the  Rattlesnake : — 

Jermyn  Street,  Nov.  17. 

My  dear  Hooker — My  wife  wrote  to  yours  yesterday,  the 
enclosed  note  explaining  the  kitchen-revolution  which,  it  seems, 
must  delay  our  meeting.  When  she  had  done,  however,  she  did 
not  know  where  to  direct  it,  and  I  am  no  wiser,  so  I  send  it  to 
you. 

It's  a  horrid  nuisance  and  I  have  sworn  a  few,  but  that  will 
not  cook  the  dinner,  however  much  it  may  prepare  me  for  being 
cooked  elsewhere.  To  complete  my  disgust  at  things  in  general, 
my  wife  is  regularly  knocked  up  with  dining  out  twice  this 
week,  though  it  was  only  in  the  quietest  way.  I  shall  have  to 
lock  her  up  altogether. 

X has  made  a  horrid  mess  of  it,  and  I  am  sorry  to  say, 

from  what  I  know  of  him,  that  I  cannot  doubt  where  the  fault 
lies.  The  worst  of  it  is  that  he  has  a  wife  and  three  children 
over  here,  left  without  a  penny  or  any  means  of  support.  The 
poor  woman  wrote  to  me  the  other  day,  and  when  I  went  to  see 
her  I  found  her  at  the  last  shilling  and  contemplating  the  work- 
house as  her  next  step.  She  has  brothers  in  Australia,  and  it 
appeared  to  me  that  the  only  way  to  do  her  any  good  was  to  get 
her  out.    She  cannot  starve  there,  and  there  will  be  more  hope 


i86i  A  P(X)R  CLIENT 


251 


for  her  children  than  an  English  poor-house.  I  am  going  to 
see  if  the  Emigration  Commissioners  will  do  anything  for  her, 
as  of  course  it  is  desirable  to  cut  down  the  cost  of  exportation 
to  the  smallest  amount 

It  h  most  lamentable  that  a  man  of  so  much  ability  should 
have  so  utterly  damned  himself  as  X has,  but  he  is  hope- 
lessly Celtic. 

I  shall  be  at  the  Phil.  Club  next  Thursday. — Ever  yours 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

14  Waverley  Place,  Monday  morning  [Nov.  1861]. 

My  dear  Hooker  —  The  obstinate  manner  in  which  Mrs. 
Hooker  and  you  go  on  refusing  to  give  any  address  leads  us  to 
believe  that  you  are  dwelling  peripatetically  in  a  "  Wan  **  with 
green  door  and  brass  knocker  somewhere  on  Wormwood 
Scrubbs,  and  that  "  Kew  "  is  only  a  blind.  So  you  see  I  am 
obliged  to  inclose  Mrs.  Hooker's  epistle  to  you. 

You  shall  have  your  own  way  about  the  dinner,  though  we 
shall  have  triumphed  over  all  domestic  difficulties  by  that  time, 
and  the  first  lieutenant  scorns  the  idea  of  being  "worrited" 
about  anything.  I  only  grieve  it  is  such  a  mortal  long  way  for 
you  to  come. 

I  could  find  it  in  my  heart  to  scold  you  well  for  your  gener- 
ous aid  to  my  poor  client.  I  assure  you  I  told  you  ail  about  the 
case  because  it  was  fresh  in  my  mind,  and  without  the  least 
notion  of  going  to  you  for  that  kind  of  aid.  May  it  come  back 
to  you  in  some  good  shape  or  other. 

I  find  it  is  no  use  to  look  for  help  from  the  emigration  people, 
but  I  have  no  fear  of  being  able  to  get  the  £50  which  will  send 
them  out  by  the  Walter  Hood. 

Would  it  be  fair  to  apply  to  Bell  in  such  a  case  ?  I  will  have 
a  talk  to  you  about  it  at  the  Phil.  Club. — Ever,  my  dear  Hooker, 
yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  1862,  in  addition  to  all  the  work  connected  with  the 
species  question  already  detailed,  Huxley  published  three 
paleontological  papers,*  while  the  paper  on  the  "  Anatomy 
and  Development  of  Pyrosoma,"  first  read  on  December  i, 

♦  **  On  the  new  Labyrinthodonts  from  the  coal-field  of  Edinburgh  "  ; 
•*  On  a  Stalk-eyed  Crustacean  from  the  coal-fields  of  Paisley " ;  and 
"  On  the  Teeth  of  Diprotodon." 


252  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvn 

1859,  was  now  published  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Linncean 
Society. 

In  the  list  of  work  in  hand  are  four  paleontological  pa- 
pers,* besides  the  slowly  progressing  Manual  of  Comparative 
'Anatomy, 

When  he  went  north  to  deliver  his  lectures  at  Edin- 
burgh "  On  the  relation  of  Man  to  the  Lower  Animals/' 
he  took  the  opportunity  of  examining  fossils  at  Forfar, 
and  lectured  also  at  Glasgow;  while  at  Easter  he  went  to 
Ireland;  on  March  15  he  was  at  Dublin,  lecturing  there 
on  the  25th. 

Reference  has  already  been  made  (in  the  letter  to  C. 
Darwin  of  May  6,  1862)  to  the  unsatisfactory  state  of  Hux- 
ley's health.  He  was  further  crippled  by  neuralgic  rheu- 
matism in  his  arm  and  shoulder,  and  to  get  rid  of  this,  went 
on  July  I  to  Switzerland  for  a  month's  holiday.  Reaching 
Grindelwald  on  the  4th,  he  was  joined  on  the  6th  by  Dr. 
Tyndall,  and  with  him  rambled  on  the  glacier  and  made 
an  expedition  to  the  Faulhom.  On  the  13th  they  went 
to  the  Rhone  glacier,  meeting  Sir  J.  Lubbock  on  their  way, 
at  the  other  side  of  the  Grimsel.  Both  here  and  at  the 
Eggischhom,  where  they  went  a  few  days  later,  Huxley 
confined  himself  to  easy  expeditions,  or,  as  his  notebook 
has  it,  stayed  "  quiet "  or  "  idle,"  while  the  hale  pair  as- 
cended the  Galenstock  and  the  Jungfrau. 

By  July  28  he  was  home  again  in  time  for  an  exam- 
iners' meeting  at  the  London  University  the  next  day,  and 
z  viva  voce  in  physiology  on  the  4th  August,  before  going 
to  Scotland  to  serve  on  the  Fishery  Commission. 

This  was  the  first  of  the  numerous  commissions  on 
which  he  served.  With  his  colleagues.  Dr.  Lyon  Playfair 
(afterwards  Lord  Playfair)  and  Colonel  Maxwell,  he  was 
busy  from  August  8  to  September  16,  chiefly  on  the  west 
coast,  taking  evidence  from  the  trawlers  and  their  oppo- 

♦  **  On  Indian  Fossils,"  on  "Cephalaspis  and  Pteraspis,"  on  **Sta- 
gonolepis/*  and  a  "Memoir  descriptive  of  Labyrinthodont  remains 
from  the  Trias  and  Coal  of  Britain,"  which  he  first  treated  of  in  1858, 
"clearly  establishing  for  the  first  time  the  vertebrate  nature  of  these 
remains."— Sir  M.  Foster,  Obit.  Notice,  Prcc,  R.  S,  lix.  55. 


1862  EXAMINER  AT  COLLEGE  OF  SURGEONS  253 

nents,  and  making  direct  investigations  into  the  habits  of 
the  herring. 

The  following  letter  to  Mr.  (afterwards  Sir  W.  H.) 
Flower,  then  Curator  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons' 
Museum,  refers  to  this  trip  and  to  his  appointment  to  the 
examinership  in  physiology  at  the  College  of  Surgeons,  for 
which  he  had  applied  in  May  and  which  he  held  until  1870. 
Mr.  Flower,  indeed,  was  deeply  interested  at  this  time  in 
the  same  problems  as  Huxley,  and  helped  his  investigations 
for  Man's  Place  by  making  a  number  of  dissections  to  test 
the  disputed  relations  between  the  brain  of  man  and  of 
the  apes. 

Hotel  db  la  Jungfrau,  Aeggischhorn,  July  18,  1862. 

My  dear  Flower — Many  thanks  for  your  letter.  I  shall 
make  my  acknowledgments  to  the  council  in  due  form  when  I 
have  read  the  official  announcement  on  my  return  to  England. 

I  trust  they  will  not  have  occasion  to  repent  declining  Dr. 's 

offer.    At  any  rate  I  shall  do  my  best 

I  am  particularly  obliged  to  you  for  telling  me  about  the 
Dijon  bones.  Dijon  lies  quite  in  my  way  in  returning  to  Eng- 
land, and  I  shall  stop  a  day  there  for  the  purpose  of  making  the 
acquaintance  of  M.  Nodet  and  his  Schisopleuron.  I  have  a  sort 
of  dim  recollection  that  there  are  some  other  remains  of  extinct 
South  American  mammals  in  the  Dijon  Museum  which  I  ought 
to  see. 

Your  news  about  the  lower  jaw  made  me  burst  out  into  such 
an  exclamation  that  all  the  salle-a-manger  heard  me !  I  saw  the 
fitness  of  the  thing  at  once.  The  foramen  and  the  shape  of  the 
condyle  ought  to  have  suggested  it  at  once. 

I  have  had  a  very  pleasant  trip,  passing  through  Grindel- 
wald,  the  Aar  valley,  and  the  Rhone  valley,  as  far  as  here ;  but, 
up  to  the  day  before  yesterday,  my  health  remained  very  unsatis- 
factory, and  I  was  terribly  teased  by  the  neuralgia  or  rheu- 
matism or  whatever  it  is. 

On  that  day,  however,  I  had  a  very  sharp  climb  involving  a 
great  deal  of  exertion  and  a  most  prodigious  sweating,  and  on 
the  next  morning  I  really  woke  up  a  new  man.  Yesterday  I  re- 
peated the  dose  and  I  am  in  hopes  now  that  I  shall  come  back 
fit  to  grapple  with  all  the  work  that  lies  before  me. — Ever,  my 

dear  Flower,  yours  very  faithfully,  'p  u  xj 

1 .  rl.  rlUXLEY. 


254  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

This  autumn  he  gladly  took  on  what  appeared  to  be  an 
additional  piece  of  work.  On  October  12  he  writes  from 
26  Abbey  Place : — 

I  saw  Flower  yesterday,  and  I  find  that  my  present  colleague 
in  the  Hunterian  Professorship  wishes  to  get  rid  of  his  share 
in  the  lectures,  having,  I  suppose,  at  the  eleventh  hour  discov- 
ered his  incompetency.  It  looks  paradoxical  to  say  so,  but  it 
will  really  be  easier  for  me  to  give  eighteen  or  twenty-four  lec- 
tures than  twelve,  so  that  I  have  professed  my  readiness  to  take 
as  much  as  he  likes  off  his  hands. 

This  professorship  had  been  in  existence  for  more  than 
sixty  years,  for  when  the  Museum  of  the  famous  anatomist 
John  Hunter  was  entrusted  to  the  College  of  Surgeons  by 
the  Government,  the  condition  was  made  that  "  one  course 
of  lectures,  not  less  than  twenty-four  in  number,  on  com- 
parative anatomy  and  other  subjects,  illustrated  by  the 
preparations,  shall  be  given  every  year  by  some  member  of 
the  company."  Huxley  arranged  to  publish  from  year  to 
year  the  substance  of  his  lectures  on  the  vertebrates,  "  and 
by  that  process  to  bring  out  eventually  a  comprehensive, 
though  condensed,  systematic  work  on  Comparative  Anat- 
omy.'* * 

Of  the  labour  entailed  in  this  course,  the  late  Sir  W.  H. 
Flower  wrote: — 

When,  in  1862,  he  was  appointed  to  the  Hunterian  Pro- 
fessorship at  the  College  of  Surgeons,  he  took  for  the  subject 
of  several  yearly  courses  of  lectures  the  anatomy  of  the  verte- 
brata,  beginning  with  the  primates,  and  as  the  subject  was  then 
rather  new  to  him,  and  as  it  was  a  rule  with  him  never  to  make 
a  statement  in  a  lecture  which  was  not  founded  upon  his  own 
actual  observation,  he  set  to  work  to  make  a  series  of  original 
dissections  of  all  the  forms  he  treated  of.  These  were  carried 
on  in  the  workroom  at  the  top  of  the  college,  and  mostly  in  the 
evenings,  after  his  daily  occupation  at  Jermyn  Street  (the 
School  of  Mines,  as  it  was  then  called)  was  over,  an  arrange- 
ment which  my  residence  in  the  college  buildings  enabled  me 
to  make  for  him.  These  rooms  contained  a  large  store  of 
material,  entire  or  partially  dissected  animals  preserved  in  spirit, 

*  Comparative  Anatomy^  vol.  i.  Preface. 


1862  HUNTERIAN   PROFESSOR 


255 


which,  unlike  those  mounted  in  the  museum,  were  available  for 
further  investigation  in  any  direction,  and  these,  supplemented 
occasionally  by  fresh  subjects  from  the  Zoological  Gardens, 
formed  the  foundation  of  the  lectures.  ...  On  these  evenings 
it  was  always  my  privilege  to  be  with  him,  and  to  assist  in  the 
work  in  which  he  was  engaged.  In  dissecting,  as  in  everything 
else,  he  was  a  very  rapid  worker,  going  straight  to  the  point  he 
wished  to  ascertain  with  a  firm  and  steady  hand,  never  diverted 
into  side  issues,  nor  wasting  any  time  in  unnecessary  polishing 
up  for  the  sake  of  appearances;  the  very  opposite,  in  fact,  to 
what  is  commonly  known  as  "  finikin."  His  great  facility  for 
bold  and  dashing  sketching  came  in  most  usefully  in  this  work, 
the  notes  he  made  being  largely  helped  out  with  illustrations. 

The  following  is  the  letter  in  which  he  makes  himself 
known  to  Professor  Haeckel  of  Jena,  who,  in  his  thanks  for 
the  specimens,  bewails  the  lot  of  "  us  poor  inland  Germans, 
who  have  to  get  help  from  England." 

The  Royal  School  of  Mines* 
Jermyn  Street.  London,  October  28,  1862. 

Sir  —  A  copy  of  your  exceedingly  valuable  and  beautiful 
monograph,  "  Die  Radiolarien,"  came  into  my  hands  two  or 
three  days  ago,  and  I  have  been  devoting  the  little  leisure  I 
possess  just  at  present  to  a  careful  study  of  its  contents,  which 
are  to  me  profoundly  interesting  and  instructive. 

Permit  me  to  say  this  much  by  way  of  introduction  to  a 
request  which  I  have  to  prefer,  which  is,  that  you  will  be  good 
enough  to  let  me  have  a  copy  of  your  Habitationsschrift,  De 
Rhizopodum  Finibus,  if  you  have  one  to  spare.  If  it  is  sent 
through  Frommans  of  Jena  to  the  care  of  Messrs.*  Williams  and 
Norgate,  London,  it  will  reach  me  safely. 

I  observe  that  in  your  preface  you  state  that  you  have  no 
specimen  of  the  famous  Barbadoes  deposit.  As  I  happen  to 
possess  some  from  Schomburgk's  own  collection,  I  should  be 
ashamed  to  allow  you  any  longer  to  suffer  from  that  want,  and  I 
beg  your  acceptance  of  the  inclosed  little  packet.  If  this  is  not 
sufficient,  pray  let  me  know  and  I  will  send  you  as  much  more. 

If  you  desire  it,  I  can  also  send  you  some  of  the  Oran  earth, 
and  as  much  as  you  like  of  the  Atlantic  deep-sea  soundings, 
which  are  almost  entirely  made  up  of  Globigerina  and  Polycis- 
tina. — I  am.  Sir,  yours  very  faithfully, 

Thomas  H.  Huxley. 


256  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

The  next  letter  refers  to  the  scientific  examinations  at 
the  University  of  London. 

Dec,  4,  1862. 

My  dear  Hooker — I  look  upon  you  as  art  and  part  of  the 
Natural  History  Review,  though  not  ostensibly  one  of  the  gang, 
so  I  bid  you  to  a  feast,  partly  of  reason  and  partly  of  mutton,  at 
my  house  on  December  11  (being  this  day  week)  at  half-past 
six.  Do  come  if  you  can,  for  we  have  not  seen  your  ugly  old 
phiz  for  ages,  and  should  be  comforted  by  an  inspection  thereof, 
however  brief. 

I  did  my  best  yesterday  to  get  separate  exhibitions  for  Chem- 
istry, Botany,  and  Zoological  Biology,  at  the  committee  yester- 
day,* and  I  suspect  from  your  letter  that  if  you  had  been  there 
you  would  have  backed  me.  However,  it  is  clear  they  only 
mean  to  g^ve  separate  exhibits  for  Chemistry  and  Biology  as  a 
whole. 

Because  Botany  and  Zoology  are,  philosophically  speaking, 
cognate  subjects,  people  are  under  the  delusion  that  it  is  easier 
to  work  both  up  at  the  same  time,  than  it  would  be  to  work  up, 
say.  Chemistry  and  Botany.  Just  fancy  asking  a  young  man 
who  has  heaps  of  other  things  to  work  up  for  the  B.Sc,  to 
qualify  himself  for  honours  both  in  botany,  histological,  sys- 
tematic, and  physiological.  That  is  to  say,  to  get  a  practical 
knowledge  of  both  these  groups  of  subjects. 

I  really  think  the  botanical  and  zoological  examiners  ought 
to  memorialise  the  senate  jointly  on  the  subject.  The  present 
system  leads  to  mere  sham  and  cram. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  yean  1863,  notable  for  the  publication  of  Huxley's 
first  book,  found  him  plunged  deep  in  an  immense  quantity 
of  work  of  all  sorts.  He  was  still  examiner  in  Physiology 
and  Comparative  Anatomy  at  the  London  University,  a 
post  he  held  from  1855  to  1863,  2i"d  again  from  1865  to 
1870,  "  making,"  as  Sir  Michael  Foster  says,  "  even  an 
examination  feel  the  influence  of  the  new  spirit  in  biology ; 
and  among  his  examinees  at  that  time  there  was  one  at 
least  who,  knowing  Huxley  by  his  writings,  but  by  his 
writings  only,  looked  forward  to  the  viva  voce  test,  not  as 
a  trial,  but  as  an  occasion  of  delight." 

*  At  the  London  University. 


1863  SPECIES  AND   STERILITY  257 

In  addition  to  the  work  mentioned  in  the  following 
letters,  I  note  three  lectures  at  Hull  on  April  6,  8,  and  10 ; 
a  paper  on  "  Craniology  "  (January  17),  and  his  "  Letter  on 
the  Human  Remains  in  the  Shell  Mounds,"  in  the  Ethfw- 
logical  Society's  Transactions,  while  the  Fishery  Commission 
claimed  much  of  his  time,  either  at  the  Board  of  Trade,  or 
travelling  over  the  north,  east,  and  south  coasts  from  the 
end  of  July  to  the  beginning  of  October,  and  again  in 
November  and  December. 

Jermyn  Street,  ApH/  30,  1863. 

My  dear  Kingsley — I  am  exceedingly  pleased  to  have  your 
good  word  about  the  lectures,* — and  I  think  I  shall  thereby  be 
encouraged  to  do  what  a  great  many  people  have  wished — that 
is,  to  bring  out  an  enlarged  and  revised  edition  of  them. 

The  only  difficulty  is  time — if  one  could  but  work  five-and- 
twenty  hours  a  day ! 

With  respect  to  the  sterility  question,  I  do  not  think  there  is 
much  doubt  as  to  the  effect  of  breeding  in  and  in  in  destroying 
fertility.  But  the  sterility  which  must  be  obtained  by  the  selec- 
tive breeder  in  order  to  convert  his  morphological  species  into 
physiological  species — ^such  as  we  have  in  nature — ^must  be  quite 
irrespective  of  breeding  in  and  in. 

There  is  no  question  of  breeding  in  and  in  between  a  horse 
and  an  ass,  and  yet  their  produce  is  usually  a  sterile  hybrid. 

So  if  Carrier  and  Tumbler,  e.g.,  were  physiological  species 
equivalent  to  Horse  and  Ass,  their  progeny  ought  to  be  sterile 
or  semi-sterile.  So  far  as  experience  has  gone,  on  the  contrary, 
it  is  perfectly  fertile — as  fertile  as  the  progeny  of  Carrier  and 
Carrier  or  Tumbler  and  Tumbler. 

From  the  first  time  that  I  wrote  about  Darwin's  book  in  the 
Times  and  in  the  Westminster  until  now,  it  has  been  obvious  to 
me  that  this  is  the  weak  point  of  Darwin's  doctrine.  He  has 
shown  that  selective  breeding  is  a  vera  causa  for  morphological 
species;  he  has  not  yet  shown  it  a  vera  causa  for  physiological 
species. 

But  I  entertain  little  doubt  that  a  carefully  devised  system 
of  experimentation  would  produce  physiological  species  by  selec- 
tion—only the  feat  has  not  been  performed  yet. 

I  hope  you  received  a  copy  of  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  which 
I  desired  should  be  sent  to  you  long  ago.    Don't  suppose  I  ever 

*  See  p.  223. 


258  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

expect  an  acknowledgment  of  a  book — it  is  one  of  the  greatest 
nuisances  in  the  world  to  have  that  to  do,  and  I  never  do  it — 
but  as  you  mentioned  the  Lectures  and  not  the  other,  I  thought 
it  might  not  have  reached  you.  If  it  has  not,  pray  let  me  know 
and  a  copy  shall  be  forwarded,  as  I  want  you  very  much  to 
read  Essay  No.  2. 

I  have  a  great  respect  for  all  the  old  bottles,  and  if  the  new 
wine  can  be  got  to  go  into  them  and  not  burst  them  I  shall  be 
very  glad — I  confess  I  do  not  see  my  way  to  it;  on  the  con- 
trary, the  longer  I  live  and  the  more  I  learn  the  more  hopeless 
to  my  mind  becomes  the  contradiction  between  the  theory  of  the 
universe  as  understood  and  expounded  by  Jewish  and  Christian 
theologians,  and  the  theory  of  the  universe  which  is  every  day 
and  every  year  growing  out  of  the  application  of  scientific 
methods  to  its  phenomena. 

Whether  astronomy  and  geology  can  or  cannot  be  made  to 
agree  with  the  statements  as  to  the  matters  of  fact  laid  down 
in  Genesis — ^whether  the  Gospels  are  historically  true  or  not 
— are  matters  of  comparatively  small  moment  in  the  face  of  the 
impassable  gulf  between  the  anthropomorphism  (however  re- 
fined) of  theology  and  the  passionless  impersonality  of  the  un- 
known and  unknowable  which  science  shows  everywhere  under- 
lying the  thin  veil  of  phenomena. 

Here  seems  to  me  to  be  the  great  gulf  fixed  between  science 
and  theology — ^beside  which  all  Colenso  controversies,  reconcile- 
ments of  Scripture  d  la  Pye  Smith,  etc.,  cut  a  very  small  figure. 

You  must  have  thought  over  all  this  long  ago;  but  steeped 
as  I  am  in  scientific  thought  from  morning  till  night,  the  con- 
trast has  perhaps  a  greater  vividness  to  me.  I  go  into  society, 
and  except  among  two  or  three  of  my  scientific  colleagues  I 
find  myself  alone  on  these  subjects,  and  as  hopelessly  at  variance 
with  the  majority  of  my  fellow-men  as  they  would  be  with  their 
neighbours  if  they  were  set  down  among  the  Ashantees.  I  don't 
like  this  state  of  things  for  myself — least  of  all  do  I  see  how 
it  will  work  out  for  my  children.  But  as  my  mind  is  constituted, 
there  is  no  way  out  of  it,  and  I  can  only  envy  you  if  you  can 
see  things  differently. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermyn  Street,  May  5,  1863. 
My  dear  Kingsley  —  My  wife  and  children  are  away  at 
Felixstow  on  the  Suffolk  coast,  and  as  I  run  down  on  Saturday 
and  come  back  on  Monday  your  MS.  has  been  kept  longer  than 


i863  THE  ADVANCE   OF   MANKIND  259 

it  should  have  been.  I  am  quite  agreed  with  the  general  tenor 
of  your  argument ;  and  indeed  I  have  often  argued  against  those 
who  maintain  the  intellectual  gulf  between  man  and  the  lower 
animals  to  be  an  impassable  one,  by  pointing  to  the  immense 
intellectual  chasm  as  compared  to  the  structural  differences 
between  two  species  of  bees  or  between  sheep  and  goat  or  dog 
and  wolf.  So  again  your  remarks  upon  the  argument  drawn 
from  the  apparent  absence  of  progression  in  animals  seem  to 
me  to  be  quite  just.  You  might  strengthen  them  much  by  refer- 
ence to  the  absence  of  progression  in  many  races  of  men.  The 
West  African  savage,  as  the  old  voyagers  show,  was  in  just  the 
same  condition  two  hundred  years  ago  as  now — ^and  I  suspect 
that  the  modern  Patagbnian  is  as  nearly  as  possible  the  unim- 
proved representative  of  the  makers  of  the  flint  implements  of 
Abbeville. 

Lyell's  phrase  is  very  good,  but  it  is  a  simple  application  of 
Darwin's  views  to  human  history.  The  advance  of  mankind 
has  ever)rwhere  depended  on  the  production  of  men  of  genius; 
and  that  production  is  a  case  of  "  spontaneous  variation  "  be- 
coming hereditary,  not  by  physical  propagation,  but  by  the  help 
of  language,  letters  and  the  printing  press.  Newton  was  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  a  "  sport "  of  a  dull  agricultural  stock,  and 
his  intellectual  powers  are  to  a  certain  extent  propagated  by  the 
grafting  of  the  "  Principia,"  his  brain-shoot,  on  us. 

Many  thanks  for  your  letter.  It  is  a  great  pleasure  to  me  to 
be  able  to  speak  out  to  any  one  who,  like  yourself,  is  striving  to 
get  at  truth  through  a  region  of  intellectual  and  moral  influences 
so  entirely  distinct  from  those  to  which  I  am  exposed. 

I  am  not  much  given  to  open  my  heart  to  anybody,  and  on 
looking  back  I  am  often  astonished  at  the  way  in  which  I  threw 
myself  and  my  troubles  at  your  head,  in  those  bitter  days  when 
my  poor  boy  died.  But  the  way  in  which  you  received  my 
heathen  letters  set  up  a  freemasonry  between  us,  at  any  rate  on 
my  side ;  and  if  they  make  you  a  bishop  I  advise  you  not  to  let 
your  private  secretary  open  any  letters  with  my  name  in  the 
corner,  for  they  are  as  likely  as  not  to  contain  matters  which 
will  make  the  clerical  hair  stand  on  end. 

I  am  too  much  a  believer  in  Butler  and  in  the  great  principle 
of  the  "  Analogy "  that  "  there  is  no  absurdity  in  theology  so 
great  that  you  cannot  parallel  it  by  a  greater  absurdity  of 
Nature"  (it  is  not  commonly  stated  in  this  way),  to  have  any 
difficulties  about  miracles.  I  have  never  had  the  least  sympathy 
with  the  a  priori  reasons  against  orthodoxy,  and  I  have  by 


26o  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

nature  and  disposition  the  greatest  possible  antipathy  to  all  the 
atheistic  and  infidel  school. 

Nevertheless,  I  know  that  I  am,  in  spite  of  myself,  exactly 
what  the  Christian  world  call,  and,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  are  justi- 
fied in  calling,  atheist  and  infidel.  I  cannot  see  one  shadow  or 
tittle  of  evidence  that  the  great  unknown  underlying  the  phe- 
nomena of  the  universe  stands  to  us  in  the  relation  of  a  Father 
— loves  us  and  cares  for  us  as  Christianity  asserts.  On  the  con- 
trary, the  whole  teaching  of  experience  seems  to  me  to  show 
that  while  the  governance  (if  I  may  use  the  term)  of  the  uni- 
verse is  rigorously  just  and  substantially  kind  and  beneficent, 
there  is  no  more  relation  of  affection  between  governor  and 
governed  than  between  me  and  the  twelve  judges.  I  know  the 
administrators  of  the  law  desire  to  do  their  best  for  every- 
body, and  that  they  would  rather  not  hurt  me  than  other- 
wise, but  I  also  know  that  under  certain  circumstances  they 
will  most  assuredly  hang  me;  and  that  in  any  case  it  would 
be  absurd  to  suppose  them  guided  by  any  particular  affection 
for  me. 

This  seems  to  me  to  be  the  relation  which  exists  between  the 
cause  of  the  phenomena  of  this  universe  and  myself.  I  submit 
to  it  with  implicit  obedience  and  perfect  cheerfulness,  and  the 
more  because  my  small  intelligence  does  not  see  how  any  other 
arrangement  could  possibly  be  got  to  work  as  the  world  is  con- 
stituted. 

But  this  is  what  the  Christian  world  calls  atheism,  and  be- 
cause all  my  toil  and  pains  does  not  enable  me  to  see  my  way 
to  any  other  conclusion  than  this,  a  Christian  judge  would  (if 
he  knew  it)  refuse  to  take  my  evidence  in  a  court  of  justice 
against  that  of  a  Christian  ticket-of-leave  man. 

So  with  regard  to  the  other  great  Christian  dogmas,  the  im- 
mortality of  the  soul,  and  the  future  state  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments, what  possible  objection  a  priori  can  I — ^who  am  com- 
pelled perforce  to  believe  in  the  immortality  of  what  we  call 
Matter  and  Force  and  in  a  very  unmistakable  present  state  of 
rewards  and  punishments  for  all  our  deeds — ^have  to  these  doc- 
trines ?  Give  me  a  scintilla  of  evidence,  and  I  am  ready  to  jump 
at  them. 

But  read  Butler,  and  see  to  what  drivel  even  his  great  mind 
descends  when  he  has  to  talk  about  the  immortality  of  the  soul ! 
I  have  never  seen  an  argument  on  that  subject  which  from  a 
scientific  point  of  view  is  worth  the  paper  it  is  written  upon. 
All  resolve  themselves  into  this  formula: — The  doctrine  of  the 


i863*  FACT  AND   SPECULATION  261 

immortality  of  the  soul  is  very  pleasant  and  very  useful,  there- 
fore it  is  true. 

All  the  grand  language  about  ''human  aspiration,"  "con- 
sistency with  the  divine  justice,"  etc.  etc.,  collapses  into  this  at 
last — Better  the  misery  of  the  "  Vale  1  in  aeternum  vale !  "  ten 
times  over  than  the  opium  of  such  empty  sophisms — I  have 
drunk  of  that  cup  to  the  bottom. 

I  am  called  away  and  must  close  my  letter.  Don't  trouble 
to  answer  it  unless  you  are  so  minded. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermvn  Street,  May  22,  1863. 

My  dear  Kingsley — Pray  excuse  my  delay  in  replying  to 
your  letter.  I  have  been  very  much  pressed  for  time  for  these 
two  or  three  days. 

First  touching  the  action  of  the  spermatozoon.  The  best 
information  you  can  find  on  the  subject  is,  I  think,  in  Newport's 
papers  in  the  Philosophical  Transactions  for  1851,  1853,  and 
1854,  especially  the  1853  paper.  Newport  treats  only  of  the 
Frog,  but  the  information  he  gives  is  very  full  and  definite. 
Allen  Thomson's  very  accurate  and  learneci  article  "  Ovum " 
in  Todd's  Cyclopcedia  is  also  well  worth  looking  through,  though 
unfortunately  it  is  least  full  just  where  you  want  most  informa- 
tion. In  French  there  is  Coste's  Developpement  des  Corps 
organises  and  the  volume  on  "  Development "  by  Bischoff  in 
the  French  translation  of  the  last  edition  of  Soemmering's 
Anatomy, 

So  much  for  your  inquiries  as  to  the  matters  of  fact.  Next, 
as  to  questions  of  speculation.  If  any  expression  of  ignorance 
on  my  part  will  bring  us  nearer  we  are  likely  to  come  into 
absolute  contact,  for  the  possibilities  of  "  may  be  "  are,  to  me, 
infinite. 

I  know  nothing  of  Necessity,  abominate  the  word  Law  (ex- 
cept as  meaning  that  we  know  nothing  to  the  contrary),  and 
am  quite  ready  to  admit  that  there  may  be  some  place,  "  other 
side  of  nowhere,"  par  exemple,  where  2  +  2  =  5,  and  all  bodies 
naturally  repel  one  another  instead  of  gravitating  together. 

I  don't  know  whether  Matter  is  anything  distinct  from 
Force.  I  don't  know  that  atoms  are  anything  but  pure  myths. 
Cogito,  ergo  sum  is  to  my  mind  a  ridiculous  piece  of  bad  logic, 
all  I  can  say  at  any  time  being  "Cogito."  The  Latin  form  I 
hold  to  be  preferable  to  the  English  "  I  think,"  because  the  latter 
asserts  the  existence  of  an  Ego — about  which  the  bundle  of 


262  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

phenomena  at  present  addressing  you  knows  nothing.  In  fact, 
if  I  am  pushed,  metaphysical  speculation  lands  me  exactly  where 
your  friend  Raphael  was  when  his  bitch  pupped.  In  other 
words,  I  believe  in  Hamilton,  Mansell  and  Herbert  Spencer 
so  long  as  they  are  destructive,  and  I  laugh  at  their  beards  as 
soon  as  they  try  to  spin  their  own  cobwebs. 

Is  this  basis  of  ignorance  broad  enough  for  you?  If  you, 
theologian,  can  find  as  firm  footing  as  I,  man  of  science,  do  on 
this  foundation  of  minus  nought — there  will  be  nought  to  fear 
for  our  ever  diverging. 

For  you  see  I  am  quite  as  ready  to  admit  your  doctrine  that 
souls  secrete  bodies  as  I  am  the  opposite  one  that  bodies  secrete 
souls — simply  because  I  deny  the  possibility  of  obtaining  any 
evidence  as  to  the  truth  and  falsehood  of  either  hypothesis.  My 
fundamental  axiom  of  speculative  philosophy  is  that  materialism 
and  spiritualism  are  opposite  poles  of  the  same  absurdity — the 
absurdity  of  imagining  that  we  know  anything  about  either 
spirit  or  matter. 

Cabanis  and  Berkeley  (I  speak  of  them  simply  as  types  of 
schools)  are  both  asses,  the  only  difference  being  that  one  is  a 
black  donkey  and  the  other  a  white  one. 

This  universe  is,  I  conceive,  like  to  a  great  game  being 
played  out,  and  we  poor  mortals  are  allowed  to  take  a  hand. 
By  great  good  fortune  the  wiser  among  us  have  made  out  some 
few  of  the  rules  of  the  game,  as  at  present  played.  We  call 
them  "Laws  of  Nature,"  and  honour  them  because  we  find 
that  if  we  obey  them  we  win  something  for  our  pains.  The 
cards  are  our  theories  and  hypotheses,  the  tricks  our  experi- 
mental verifications.  But  what  sane  man  would  endeavour  to 
solve  this  problem :  given  the  rules  of  a  game  and  the  winnings, 
to  find  whether  the  cards  are  made  of  pasteboard  or  gold- 
leaf?  Yet  the  problem  of  the  metaphysicians  is  to  my  mind 
no  saner. 

If  you  tell  me  that  an  Ape  differs  from  a  Man  because  the 
latter  has  a  soul  and  the  ape  has  not,  I  can  only  say  it  may  be 
so;  but  I  should  unconmionly  like  to  know  how  either  that  the 
ape  has  not  one  or  that  the  man  has. 

And  until  you  satisfy  me  as  to  the  soundness  of  your  method 
of  investigation,  I  must  adhere  to  what  seems  to  my  mind  a 
simpler  form  of  notation — i.e.  to  suppose  that  all  phenomena 
have  the  same  substratum  (if  they  have  any),  and  that  soul 
and  body,  or  mental  and  physical  phenomena,  are  merely  diverse 
manifestations  of  that  hypothetical  substratum.     In  this  way. 


i863  FOUR   POSSIBILITIES  263 

it  seems  to  me,  I  obey  the  rule  which  works  so  well  in  practice, 
of  always  making  the  simplest  possible  suppositions. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  you  are  of  a  different  opinion,  and 
find  it  more  convenient  to  call  the  x  which  underlies  (hypothetic- 
ally)  mental  phenomena,  Soul,  and  the  x  which  tmderlies  (hypo- 
thetically)  physical  phenomena.  Body,  well  and  good.  The  two- 
fluid  theory  and  the  one-fluid  theory  of  electricity  both  ac- 
counted for  the  phenomena  up  to  a  certain  extent,  and  both 
were  probably  wrong.  So  it  may  be  with  the  theories  that  there 
is  only  one  x  in  nature  or  two  ^j  or  three  ^j. 

For,  if  you  will  think  upon  it,  there  are  only  four  possible 
ontological  hypotheses  now  that  Polytheism  is  dead. 

I.  There  is  no  jr  =  Atheism  on  Berkeleyan  prin- 

ciples. 
II.  There  is  only  one  x     =  Materialism    or    Pantheism, 

according  as  you  turn  it 
heads  or  tails. 
III.  There    are    two    s^s)       ^        1  .  ^        j- 

Spin,  and  Malttr  \  =  Sp«"l«K"»  •«"•'«  "■'"• 

"''■  ■^S;S„.rMa«^  h°'*''^»  ^'°^'»- 

To  say  that  I  adopt  any  one  of  those  hypotheses,  as  a  repre- 
sentation of  fact,  would  to  my  mind  be  absurd;  but  No.  2  is  the 
one  I  can  work  with  best.  To  return  to  my  metaphor,  it  chimes 
in  better  with  the  rules  of  the  game  of  nature  than  any  other 
of  the  four  possibilities,  to  my  mind. 

But  who  knows  when  the  great  Banker  may  sweep  away 
table  and  cards  and  all,  and  set  us  learning  a  new  game  ?  What 
will  become  of  all  my  poor  counters  then?  It  may  turn  out 
that  I  am  quite  wrong,  and  that  there  are  no  3^s  or  20  3^s, 

I  am  glad  you  appreciate  the  rich  absurdities  of  the  new  doc- 
trine of  spontogenesis  [?].  Against  the  doctrine  of  spontane- 
ous generation  in  the  abstract  I  have  nothing  to  say.  Indeed  it 
is  a  necessary  corollary  from  Darwin's  views  if  legitimately  car- 
ried out,  and  I  think  Owen  smites  him  (Darwin)  fairly  for 
taking  refuge  in  "  Pentateuchal "  phraseology  when  he  ought 
to  have  done  one  of  two  things — (a)  give  up  the  problem,  (6) 
admit  the  necessity  of  spontaneous  generation.  It  is  the  very 
passage  in  Darwin's  book  to  which,  as  he  knows  right  well,  I 
have  always  strongly  objected.  The  x  of  science  and  the  x  of 
genesis  are  two  different  :^s,  and  for  any  sake  don't  let  us  con- 
fuse them  together.  Maurice  has  sent  me  his  book.  I  have 
18 


264  Llf^  OF  PROFXSSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xm 

read  it,  bat  I  fiod  iii3rself  otterlj  at  a  loss  to  cofiii>rebciid  his 
point  of  view. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  following  letter  is  interesting,  as  showing  his  con- 
tinued interest  in  the  question  of  skull  structure,  as  well  as 
his  relation  to  his  friend  and  fellow-worker.  Dr.  \V.  K. 
Parker. 

JE&MYN  Steeet,  March  18,  1863. 

My  deak  Parkei — ^Any  conclusion  that  I  have  reached  will 
seem  to  me  all  the  better  based  for  knowing  that  you  have  been 
near  or  at  it,  and  I  am  therefore  right  glad  to  have  your  letter. 
If  I  had  only  time,  nothing  would  delight  me  more  tfian  to  go 
over  your  preparations,  but  these  Hunterian  Lectures  are  about 
the  hardest  bit  of  work  I  ever  took  in  hand,  and  I  am  obliged  to 
give  every  minute  to  them. 

By  and  by  I  will  ^^adly  go  with  3rou  over  your  vast  material. 

Did  you  not  some  time  ago  tell  me  that  you  considered  the 
Y-shaped  bone  (so-called  presphenoid)  in  the  Pike  to  be  the 
true  iMisisphenoid  ?  If  so,  let  me  know  before  lecture  to-morrow, 
that  I  may  not  commit  theft  unawares. 

I  have  arrived  at  that  conclusion  myself  from  the  anatomical 
relations  of  the  bone  in  question  to  the  brain  and  nerves. 

I  look  upon  the  proposition  opisthotis  =  turtle's  "occipital 
extcmc  "  =  Perch's  Rocher  (Cuvier)  as  the  one  thing  needful 
to  clear  up  the  unity  of  structure  of  the  bony  cranium;  and  it 
shall  be  counted  unto  me  as  a  great  sin  if  I  have  helped  to  keep 
you  back  from  it  The  thing  has  been  dawning  upon  me  ever 
since  I  read  Kolliker's  book  two  summers  ago,  but  I  have  never 
had  time  to  work  it  out — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  following  extracts  from  a  letter  to  Hooker  and  a 

letter  to  Darwin  describe  the  pressure  of  his  work  at  this 

time. 

1863. 

My  dear  Hooker —  ...  I  would  willingly  send  a  paper  to 
the  Linnxan  this  year  if  I  could,  but  I  do  not  see  how  it  is 
practicable.  I  lecture  five  times  a  week  from  now  till  the  middle 
•of  February.  I  then  have  to  give  eighteen  lectures  at  the  Coll. 
Surgeons — six  on  classification,  and  twelve  on  the  vertebrate 
skeleton.  I  must  write  a  paper  on  this  new  Glyptodon,  with 
some  eighteen  to  twenty  plates.  A  preliminary  notice  has 
already  gone  to  the  Royal  Society.    I  have  a  decade  of  fossil 


1863  PRESSURE  OF  WORK  265 

fish  in  progress ;  a  fellow  in  the  country  wUl  keep  on  sending  me 
splendid  new  Labyrinthodonts  from  the  coal,  and  that  d — d 
manual  must  come  out. — Ayes  pitii  de  moi,  T.  H.  H. 

Jermyn  Street,  July  2,  1863. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  am  horribly  loth  to  say  that  I  cannot 
do  anything  you  want  done;  and  partly  for  that  reason  and 
partly  because  we  have  been  very  busy  here  with  some  new 
arrangements  during  the  last  day  or  two,  I  did  not  at  once  reply 
to  your  note. 

I  am  afraid,  however,  I  cannot  undertake  any  sort  of  new 
work.  In  spite  of  working  like  a  horse  (or  if  you  prefer  it,  like 
an  ass),  I  find  myself  scandalously  in  arrear,  and  I  shall  get  into 
terrible  hot  water  if  I  do  not  clear  oflf  some  things  that  have 
been  hanging  about  me  for  months  and  years. 

If  you  will  send  me  up  the  specimens,  however,  I  will  ask 
Flower  (whom  I  see  constantly)  to  examine  them  for  you.  The 
examination  will  be  no  great  trouble,  and  I  am  ashamed  to  make 
a  fuss  about  it,  but  I  have  sworn  a  big  oath  to  take  no  fresh 
work,  great  or  small,  until  certain  things  are  done. 

I  wake  up  in  the  morning  with  somebody  saying  in  my  ear, 
**  A  is  not  done,  and  B  is  not  done,  and  C  is  not  done,  and  D  is 
not  done,"  etc.,  and  a  feeling  like  a  fellow  whose  duns  are  all 
in  the  street  waiting  for  him.  By  the  way,  you  ask  me  what  I 
am  doing  now,  so  I  will  just  enumerate  some  of  the  A,  B,  and 
C*s  aforesaid. 

A.  Editing  lectures  on  Vertebrate  skull  and  bringing  them 
out  in  the  Medical  Times, 

B.  Editing  and  re-writing  lectures  on  Elementary  Physiolo- 
gy,* just  delivered  here  and  reported  as  I  went  along. 

C.  Thinking  of  my  course  of  twenty-four  lectures  on  the 
Mammalia  at  Coll.  Surgeons  in  next  spring,  and  making  investi- 
gations bearing  on  the  same. 

D.  Thinking  of  and  working  at  a  Manual  of  Comparative 
Anatomy  (may  it  be  d— d),  which  I  have  had  in  hand  these 
seven  years. 

*  Delivered  on  Friday  evenings  from  April  to  June  at  Jermyn 
Street,  and  reported  in  the  Medical  Times,  They  formed  the  basis  of 
his  well-known  little  book  on  Elementary  Physiology,  published  1866. 
He  writes  on  April  22 : — "  Macmillan  has  just  been  with  me,  and  I 
am  let  in  for  a  school  book  on  physiology  based  on  thi^se  lectures  of 
mine.  Money  arrangements  not  quite  fixed  yet,  but  he  is  a  good  fel- 
low, and  will  not  do  me  unnecessarily." 


266  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

E.  Getting  heaps  of  remains  of  new  Labyrinthodonts  from 
the  Glasgow  coalfield,  which  have  to  be  described. 

F.  Working  at  a  memoir  on  Glyptodon  based  on  a  new  and 
almost  entire  specimen  at  the  College  of  Surgeons. 

G.  Preparing  a  new  decade  upon  Fossil  fishes  for  this  place. 

H.  Knowing  that  I  ought  to  have  written  long  ago  a  de- 
scription of  a  most  interesting  lot  of  Indian  fossils  sent  to  me 
by  Oldham. 

I.  Being  blown  up  by  Hooker  for  doing  nothing  for  the 
Natural  History  Review, 

K.  Being  bothered  by  sundry  editors  just  to  write  articles 
"  which  you  know  you  can  knock  oflf  in  a  moment." 

L.  Consciousness  of  having  left  unwritten  letters  which 
ought  to  have  been  written  long  ago,  especially  to  C.  Darwin. 

M.  General  worry  and  botheration.  Ten  or  twelve  people 
taking  up  my  time  all  day  about  their  own  affairs. 

N.  O.  P.  Q.  R.  S.  T.  U.  V.  W.  X.  Y.  Z. 

Societies. 

Clubs. 

Dinners,  evening  parties,  and  all  the  apparatus  for  wasting 
time  called  "  Society."  Colensoism  and  botheration  about 
•Moses.  .  .  .  Finally  pestered  to  death  in  public  and  private  be- 
cause I  am  supposed  to  be  what  they  call  a  "  Darwinian." 

If  that  is  not  enough,  I  could  exhaust  the  Greek  alphabet 
for  heads  in  addition. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  that  Wyman  thinks  well  of  my  book,  as 
he  is  very  competent  to  judge.  I  hear  it  is  republished  in 
America,  but  I  suppose  I  shall  get  nothing  out  of  it.* 

An  undated  letter  to  Kingsley,  who  had  suggested  that 
he  should  write  an  article  on  Prayer,  belongs  probably  to 
the  autumn  of  1863 : — 

I  should  like  very  much  to  write  such  an  article  as  you  sug- 
gest, but  I  am  very  doubtful  about  undertaking  it  for  Fraser. 
Anything  I  could  say  would  go  to  the  root  of  praying  altogether, 
for  inasmuch  as  the  whole  universe  is  governed,  so  far  as  I 
can  see,  in  the  same  way,  and  the  moral  world  is  as  much  gov- 
erned by  laws  as  the  physical — ^whatever  militates  against  asking 
for  one  sort  of  blessing  seems  to  me  to  tell  with  the  same  force 
against  asking  for  any  other. 
« 

*  In  this  expectation,  however,  he  was  agreeably  disappointed  by 
the  action  of  D.  Appleton  and  Company,  as  is  told  on  page  305. 


1863  PRESSURE  OF  WORK  267 

Not  that  I  mean  for  a  moment  to  say  that  prayer  is  illogical, 
for  if  the  whole  universe  is  ruled  by  fixed  laws  it  is  just  as 
logically  absurd  for  me  to  ask  you  to  answer  this  letter  as  to 
ask  the  Almighty  to  alter  the  weather.  The  whole  argument  is 
an  "  old  foe  with  a  new  face,"  the  freedom  and  necessity  ques- 
tion over  again. 

.  If  I  were  to  write  about  the  question  I  should  have  to 
develop  all  this  side  of  the  problem,  and  then  having  shown 
that  logic,  as  always  happens  when  it  is  carried  to  extremes, 
leaves  us  bombinantes  in  vacuo,  I  should  appeal  to  experience  to 
show  that  prayers  of  this  sort  are  not  answered,  and  to  science 
to  prove  that  if  they  were  they  would  do  a  great  deal  of  harm. 

But  you  know  this  would  never  do  for  the  atmosphere  of 
Fraser.  It  would  be  much  better  suited  for  an  article  in  my 
favourite  organ,  the  wicked  Westminster. 

However,  to  say  truth,  I  do  not  see  how  I  am  to  undertake 
anything  fresh  just  at  present.  I  have  promised  an  article  for 
MacmiUan  ages  ago;  and  Masson  scowls  at  me  whenever  we 
meet.  I  am  afraid  to  go  through  the  Albany  lest  Cook  should 
demand  certain  reviews  of  books  which  have  been  long  in  my 
hands.  I  am  just  completing  a  long  memoir  for  the  Linnean 
Society;  a  monograph  on  certain  fossil  reptiles  must  be  finished 
before  the  new  year.  My  lectures  have  begun,  and  there  is  a 
certain  "  Manual ''  looming  in  the  background.  And  to  crown 
all,  these  late  events  *  have  given  me  such  a  wrench  that  I  feel 
I  must  be  prudent. 

The  following  reference  to  Robert  Lowe,  afterwards 
Lord  Sherbrooke,  has  a  quasi-prophetic  interest : — 

May  7. — Dined  at  the  Smiths*  f  last  night.  Lowe  was  to 
have  been  there,  but  had  a  dinner-party  of  his  own.  ...  I  have 
come  to  the  conviction  that  our  friend  Bob  is  a  most  admirable, 
well-judging  statesman,  for  he  says  I  am  the  only  man  fit  to 
be  at  the  head  of  the  British  Museum,  X  and  that  if  he  had  his 
way  he  would  put  me  there. 

Years  afterwards,  on  Sir  R.  Owen's  retirement,  he  was 
offered  the  post,  but  declined  it,  as  he  greatly  disliked  the 
kind  of  work.     At  the  same  time,  he  pointed  out  to  the 

♦  The  death  of  his  brother. 

f  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir  William)  Smith,  of  dictionary  fame. 

}  1./.  of  the  Natural  History  Collections. 


268  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvii 

Minister  who  made  the  offer  that  the  man  of  all  others' for 
the  post  would  be  the  late  distinguished  holder  of  it,  Sir  W. 
H.  Flower,  a  suggestion  happily  acted  on. 

Early  in  August  a  severe  loss  befell  him  in  the  sudden 
death  of  his  brother  George,  who  had  been  his  close  friend 
ever  since  he  had  returned  from  Australia,  who  had  given 
him  all  the  help  and  sympathy  in  his  struggles  that  could 
be  given  by  a  man  of  the  world  without  special  interests  in 
science  or  literature.  With  brilliancy  enough  to  have  won 
success  if  he  had  had  patience  to  ensure  it,  he  was.  not  only 
a  pleasant  companion,  a  ''  clubbable  man "  in  Johnson's 
phrase,  but  a  friend  to  trust.  The  two  households  had  seen 
much  of  one  another;  the  childless  couple  regarded  their 
brother's  children  almost  as  their  own.  Thus  a  real  gap 
was  made  in  the  family  circle,  and  the  trouble  was  not 
lessened  by  the  fact  that  George  Huxley's  affairs  were  left 
in  great  confusion,  and  his  brother  not  only  spent  a  g^eat 
deal  of  time  in  looking  after  the  interests  of  the  widow,  but 
took  upon  himself  certain  obligations  in  order  to  make 
things  straight,  with  the  result  that  he  was  even  compelled 
to  part  with  his  Royal  Medal,  the  gold  of  which  was  worth 
£50- 


CHAPTER   XVIII 
1864 

The  year  1864  was  much  like  1863.  The  Hunterian 
Lectures  were  still  part  of  his  regular  work.  The  Fishery 
Commission  claimed  a  large  portion  of  his  time.  From 
March  28  to  April  2  he  was  in  Cornwall;  on  May  7  at 
Shoreham ;  from  July  24  to  September  9  visiting  the  coasts 
of  Scotland  and  Ireland.  The  same  pressure  of  work  con- 
tinued. He  published  four  papers  on  paleontological  or 
anatomical  subjects  in  the  Natural  History  Review,*  he 
wrote  "  Further  Remarks  upon  the  Human  Remains  from 
the  Neanderthal,"  and  later  (see  pp.  273  and  288),  dealing 
with  "  Criticisms  on  the  Origin  of  Species  "  (Collected  Essays 
II.  p.  80,  "  Darwiniana  "),  he  gently  but  firmly  dispersed 
several  misconceptions  of  his  old  friend  Kolliker  as  to  the 
plain  meaning  of  the  book;  and  ridiculed  the  pretentious 
ignorance  of  M.  Flourens'  dicta  upon  the  same  subject; 
while  in  the  winter  he  delivered  a  course  of  lectures  to 
workingmen  on  "  The  Various  Races  of  Mankind,"  a  choice 
of  subject  which  shows  that  his  chief  interest  at  that  time 
lay  in  Ethnology. 

Jermyn  Street,  /an.  16,  1864. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  have  had  no  news  of  you  for  a  long 
time,  but  I  earnestly  hope  you  are  better. 

Have  you  any  objection  to  putting  your  name  to  Flower's 
certificate  for  the  Royal  Society  herewith  inclosed?     It  will 

*  On  **  Cetacean  Fossils  termed  Ziphius  by  Cuvier,"  in  the  Trans- 
actions  of  the  Geological  Society ;  in  those  of  the  Zoological^  papers  on 
**Arctocebus  Calabarensis  *'  and  **the  Structure  of  the  Stomach  in 
Desmodus  Rufus** ;  and  on  the  **  Osteology  of  the  Genus  Glyptodon," 
in  the  Phil.  Trans. 

269 


270 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvin 


please  him  much  if  you  will ;  and  I  go  bail  for  his  being  a  thor- 
oughly good  man  in  all  senses  of  the  word — which,  as  you  know, 
is  more  than  I  would  say  for  everybody. 

Don't  write  any  reply;  but  Mrs.  Darwin  perhaps  will  do 
me  the  kindness  to  send  the  thing  on  to  Lyell  as  per  enclosed 
envelope.    I  will  write  him  a  note  about  it. 

We  are  all  well,  barring  customary  colds  and  various  forms 
of  infantile  pip.  As  for  myself,  I  am  flourishing  like  a  green 
bay  tree  (appropriate  comparison,  Soapy  Sam  would  observe), 
in  consequence  of  having  utterly  renounced  societies  and  society 
since  October. 

I  have  been  working  like  a  horse,  however,  and  shall  work 
"horser"  as  my  college  lectures  begin  in  February. — Tout  d 
vous,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Royal  School  of  Mines, 
Jermyn  Street,  ApH/ 18,  1864. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  was  rejoiced  to  see  your  handwriting 
again,  so  much  so  that  I  shall  not  scold  you  for  undertaking  the 
needless  exertion  (as  it's  my  duty  to  do)  of  writing  to  thank  me 
for  my  book.* 

I  thought  the  last  lecture  would  be  nuts  for  you,  but  it  is 
really  shocking.  There  is  not  the  smallest  question  that  Owen 
wrote  both  the  article  "  Oken  "  and  the  Archetype  Book,  which 
appeared  in  its  second  edition  in  French — why,  I  know  not.  I 
think  that  if  you  will  look  at  what  I  say  again,  there  will  not 
be  much  doubt  left  in  your  mind  as  to  the  identity  of  the  writer 
of  the  two. 

The  news  you  g^ve  of  yourself  is  most  encouraging;  but  pray 
don't  think  of  doing  any  work  again  yet.  Careful  as  I  have  been 
during  this  last  winter  not  to  burn  the  candle  at  both  ends,  I 
have  found  myself,  since  the  pressure  of  my  lectures  ceased,  in 
considerable  need  of  quiet,  and  I  have  been  lazy  accordingly. 

I  don't  know  that  I  fear,  with  you,  caring  too  much  for  sci- 
ence— for  there  are  lots  of  other  things  I  should  like  to  go  into 
as  well,  but  I  do  lament  more  and  more  as  time  goes  on,  the 
necessity  of  becoming  more  and  more  absorbed  in  one  kind  of 
work,  a  necessity  which  is  created  for  any  one  in  my  position, 
partly  by  one's  reputation,  and  partly  by  one's  children.  For 
directly  a  man  gets  the  smallest  repute  in  any  branch  of  science, 
the  world  immediately  credits  him  with  knowing  about  ten 

*  Hunterian  Lectures  on  Anatomy, 


i864  LETTER   TO   UlS  SISTER  27 1 

times  as  much  as  he  really  does,  and  he  becomes  bound  in  com- 
mon honesty  to  do  his  best  to  climb  up  to  his  reputed  place.  And 
then  the  babies  are  a  devouring  fire,  eating  up  the  present  and 
discounting  the  future ;  they  are  sure  to  want  all  the  money  one 
can  earn,  and  to  be  the  better  for  all  the  credit  one  can  win. 

However,  I  should  fare  badly  without  the  young  monkeys. 
Your  pet  Marian  is  almost  as  shy  as  ever,  though  she  has  left 
off  saying  "  can't,"  by  the  way. 

My  wife  is  wonderfully  well.  As  I  tell  her,  Providence  has 
appointed  her  to  take  care  of  me  when  I  am  broken  down  and 
decrepit. 

I  hope  you  can  say  as  much  of  Mrs.  Darwin.  Pray  give  her 
my  kind  regards. — And  believe  me,  ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

A  letter  to  his  sister  gives  a  sketch  of  his  position  at 
this  time,  speaking  of  which  he  says  to  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir 
J.)  Fayrer,  "  You  and  I  have  travelled  a  long  way,  in  all 
senses,  since  you  settled  my  career  for  me  on  the  steps  of 
the  Charing  Cross  Hospital."  It  must  be  remembered  that 
his  sister  was  living  in  Tennessee,  and  that  her  son  at  fifteen 
was  serving  in  the  Confederate  army. 

Jermyn  Street,-  4/5/64. 

You  will  want  to  know  something  about  my  progress  in  the 
world.  Well,  at  this  moment  I  am  Professor  of  Natural  History 
here,  and  Hunterian  Professor  of  Comparative  Anatomy  at  the 
College  of  Surgeons.  The  former  is  the  appointment  I  have  held 
since  1855;  the  latter  chair  I  was  asked  to  take  last  year,  and 
now  I  have  delivered  two  courses  in  that  famous  black  gown 
with  the  red  facings  which  the  doctor  will  recollect  very  well. 
What  with  the  duties  of  these  two  posts  and  other  official  and 
non-official  business,  I  am  worked  to  the  full  stretch  of  my 
powers,  and  sometimes  a  little  beyond  them;  though  hitherto 
I  have  stood  the  wear  and  tear  very  well. 

I  believe  I  have  won  myself  a  pretty  fair  place  in  science, 
but  in  addition  to  that  I  have  the  reputation  (of  which,  I  fear, 
you  will  not  approve)  of  being  a  great  heretic  and  a  savage 
controversialist  always  in  rows.  To  the  accusation  of  heresy 
I  fear  I  must  plead  guilty ;  but  the  second  charge  proceeds  only, 
I  do  assure  you,  from  a  certain  unconquerable  hatred  of  lies 
and  humbug  which  I  cannot  get  over. 


2/2 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xviii 


I  have  read  all  you  tell  me  about  the  south  with  much  in- 
terest and  with  the  warmest  sympathy,  so  far  as  the  fate  of  the 
south  affects  you.  But  I  am  in  the  condition  of  most  thoughtful 
Englishmen.  My  heart  goes  with  the  south,  and  my  head  with 
the  north. 

I  have  no  love  for  the  Yankees,  and  I  delight  in  the  energy 
and  self-sacrifice  of  your  people ;  but  for  all  that,  I  cannot  doubt 
that  whether  you  beat  the  Yankees  or  not,  you  are  struggling 
to  uphold  a  system  which  must,  sooner  or  later,  break  down. 

I  have  not  the  smallest  sentimental  sympathy  with  the  negro ; 
don't  believe  in  him  at  all,  in  short.  But  it  is  clear  to  me  that 
slavery  means,  for  the  white  man,  bad  political  economy;  bad 
social  morality;  bad  internal  political  organisation,  and  a  bad 
influence  upon  free  labour  and  freedom  all  over  the  world.  For 
the  sake  of  the  white  man,  therefore,  for  your  children  and 
grandchildren,  directly,  and  for  mine,  indirectly,  I  wish  to  see 
this  system  ended.*  Would  that  the  south  had  had  the  wisdom 
to  initiate  that  end  without  this  miserable  war ! 

All  this  must  jar  upon  you  sadly,  and  I  grieve  that  it  does 
so ;  but  I  could  not  pretend  to  be  other  than  I  am,  even  to  please 
you.  Let  us  agree  to  differ  upon  this  point.  If  I  were  in  your 
place  I  doubt  not  I  should  feel  as  you  do ;  and,  when  I  think  of 
you,  I  put  myself  in  your  place  and  feel  with  you  as  your  brother 
Tom.  The  learned  gentleman  who  has  public  opinions  for  which 
he  is  responsible  is  another  "party"  who  walks  about  in  T*s 
clothes  when  he  is  not  thinking  of  his  sister. 

If  this  were  not  my  birthday  I  should  not  feel  justified  in 
taking  a  morning's  holiday  to  write  this  long  letter  to  you.  The 
ghosts  of  undone  pieces  of  work  are  dancing  about  me,  and  I 
must  come  to  an  end. 

Give  my  love  to  your  husband.  I  am  glad  to  hear  he  wears 
so  well.  And  don't  forget  to  give  your  children  kindly  thoughts 
of  their  uncle.  Dr.  Wright  g^ves  a  great  account  of  my  name- 
sake, and  says  he  is  the  handsomest  youngster  in  the  Southern 
States.  That  comes  of  his  being  named  after  me,  you  know 
how  renowned  for  personal  beauty  I  always  was. 

I  asked  Dr.  Wright  if  you  had  taken  to  spectacles,  and  he 
seemed  to  think  not.    I  had  a  pain  about  my  eyes  a  few  months 

♦  Cf.  Reader^  February  27  onwards,  where  these  general  arguments 
against  slavery  appear  in  a  controversy  arising  from  his  ninth  Hun- 
terian  Lecture,  in  which,  while  admitting  negro  inferiority,  he  refutes 
those  who  justify  slavery  on  the  ground  that  physiologically  the 
negro  is  very  low  in  the  scale. 


i864  CRITICISMS  OF   THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES         273 

ago,  but  I  found  spectacles  made  this  rather  worse  and  left 
them  off  again.  However,  I  do  catch  myself  holding  a  news- 
paper further  off  than  I  used  to  do. 

Now  don't  let  six  months  go  by  without  writing  again.  If 
our  little  venture  succeeds  this  time,  we  shall  send  again.* — 
Ever,  my  dearest  Lizzie,  your  affectionate  brother, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

He  writes  to  his  wife,  who  had  taken  the  children  to 
Margate : — 

Sept.  22. — I  am  now  busy  over  a  paper  for  the  Zool.  Soc. ; 
after  that  there  is  one  for  the  Ethnological  which  was  read  last 
session  though  not  written.  .  .  .  Don't  blaspheme  about  going 
into  the  bye- ways.  They  are  both  in  the  direct  road  of  the 
book,  only  over  the  hills  instead  of  going  over  the  beaten  path. 

Oct,  6. — I  heard  from  Darwin  last  night  jubilating  over  an 
article  of  mine  which  is  published  in  the  last  number  of  the 
Nai,  Hist.  Review,  and  which  he  is  immensely  pleased  with.  .  .  . 
My  lectures  tire  me,  from  want  of  practice,  I  suppose.  I  shall 
soon  get  into  swing. 

The  article  in  question  was  the  "  Criticisms  of  the  Origin 
of  Species/'  of  which  he  writes  to  Darwin : — 

Jermyn  Street,  Oct.  5,  1864. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  am  very  glad  to  see  your  handwriting 
(in  ink)  again,  and  none  the  less  on  account  of  the  pretty  words 
into  which  it  was  shaped. 

It  is  a  great  pleasure  to  me  that  you  like  the  article,  for  it 
was  written  very  hurriedly,  and  I  did  not  feel  sure  when  I  had 
done  that  I  had  always  rightly  represented  your  views. 

Hang  the  two  scalps  up  in  your  wigwam ! 

Flourens  I  could  have  believed  anything  of,  but  how  a  man 
of  Kolliker's  real  intelligence  and  ability  could  have  so  mis- 
understood the  question  is  more  than  I  can  comprehend. 

It  will  be  a  thousand  pities,  however,  if  any  review  inter- 
feres with  your  saying  something  on  the  subject  yourself.  Un- 
less it  should  give  you  needless  work  I  heartily  wish  you  would. 

Everybody  tells  me  I  am  looking  so  exceedingly  well  that  I 
am  ashamed  to  say  a  word  to  the  contrary.  But  the  fact  is,  I 
get  no  exercise,  and  a  great  deal  of  bothering  work  on  our  Com- 

*  i.e,  a  package  of  various  presents  to  the  family. 


274 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvin 


mission's  Cruise;  and  though  much  fatter  (indeed  a  regular 
bloater  myself),  I  am  not  up  to  the  mark.  Next  year  I  will 
have  a  real  holiday.* 

I  am  a  bachelor,  my  wife  and  belongings  being  all  at  that 
beautiful  place,  Margate.  When  I  came  back  I  found  them  all 
looking  so  seedy  that  I  took  them  off  bag  and  baggage  to  that, 
as  the  handiest  place,  before  a  week  was  over.  They  are  won- 
derfully improved  already,  my  wife  especially  being  abundantly 
provided  with  her  favourite  east  wind.  Your  godson  is  growing 
a  very  sturdy  fellow,  and  I  begin  to  puzzle  my  head  with  think- 
ing what  he  is  and  what  he  is  not  to  be  taught. 

Please  to  remember  me  very  kindly  to  Mrs.  Darwin,  and 

believe  me,  yours  very  faithfully,  _,  _^  ,, 

^  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  following  illustrates  the  value  he  set  upon  public 
examinations  as  to  a  practical  means  for  spreading  scientific 
education,  and  upon  first-rate  examiners  as  a  safeguard  of 
proper  methods  of  teaching. 

Oct,  6,  1864. 

My  dear  Hooker — Donnelly  told  me  to-day  that  you  had 
been  applied  to  by  the  Science  and  Tarts  Department  to  examine 
for  them  in  botany,  and  that  you  had  declined. 

Will  you  reconsider  the  matter  ?  I  have  always  taken  a  very 
great  interest  in  the  science  examinations,  looking  upon  them,  as 
I  do,  as  the  most  important  engine  for  forcing  science  into  ordi- 
nary education. 

The  English  nation  will  not  take  science  from  above,  so  it 
must  get  it  from  below. 

Having  known  these  examinations  from  the  beginning,  I 
can  assure  you  that  they  are  very  genuine  things,  and  are  work- 
ing excellently.  And  what  I  have  regretted  from  the  first  is 
that  the  botanical  business  was  not  taken  in  hand  by  you,  instead 
of  by . 

Now,  like  a  good  fellow,  think  better  of  it.  The  papers  are 
necessarily  very  simple,  and  one  of  Oliver's  pupils  could  look 
them  over  for  you.  Let  us  have  your  co-operation  and  the 
advantage  of  that  reputation  for  honesty  and  earnestness  which 
you  have  contrived  (Heaven  knows  how)  to  get. 

I  have  come  back  fat  and  seedy  for  want  of  exercise.    All 

♦  At  the  end  of  the  year,  as  so  often,  he  went  ofif  for  a  ploy  with 
Tyndall,  this  time  into  Derbyshire,  walking  vigorously  over  the  moors. 


i864  DARWIN'S  COPLEY  MEDAL  275 

my  belongings  are  at  Margate.    Hope  you  don't  think  my  review 
of  Darwin's  critics  too  heretical  if  you  have  seen  it. — Ever  ydurs 

*'''*^"''y'  T.  H.  Huxley. 

When  is  our  plan  for  getting  some  kind  of  meetings  during 
the  winter  to  be  organised  ? 

The  next  two  letters  refer  to  the  award  of  the  Copley 
Medal  to  Mr.  Darwin.  Huxley  was  exceedingly  indignant 
at  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  president  to  discredit  the 
Origin  by  a  side  wind : — 

Jerb^yn  Street,  JS^ov.  4,  1864. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  write  two  lines  which  are  not  to  be 
answered,  just  as  to  say  how  delighted  I  am  at  the  result  of  the 
doings  of  the  Council  of  the  Royal  Society  yesterday.  Many  of 
us  were  somewhat  doubtful  of  the  result,  and  the  more  ferocious 
sort  had  beg^n  to  whet  their  beaks  and  sharpen  their  claws  in 
preparation  for  taking  a  very  decided  course  of  action  had  there 
been  any  failure  of  justice  this  time.  But  the  affair  was  settled 
by  a  splendid  majority,  and  our  ruffled  feathers  are  smoothed 
down. 

Your  well-won  reputation  would  not  have  been  lessened  by 
the  lack  of  the  Copley,  but  it  would  have  been  an  indelible  re- 
proach to  the  Royal  Society  not  to  have  given  it  you,  and  a 
good  many  of  us  had  no  notion  of  being  made  to  share  that 
ignominy. 

But  quite  apart  from  all  these  grand  public-spirited  motives 
and  their  results,  you  ought  as  a  philanthropist  to  be  rejoiced  in 
the  great  satisfaction  the  award  has  given  to  your  troops  of 
friends,  to  none  more  than  my  wife  (whom  I  woke  up  to  tell 
the  news  when  I  got  home  late  last  night). — Yours  ever, 

T.  H.  HyxLEY. 

Please  remember  us  kindly  to  Mrs.  Darwin,  and  make  our 
congratulations  to  her  on  owning  a  Copley  medallist. 

Jermyn  Street,  Dec.  3,  1864. 
My  dear  Hooker — I  wish  you  had  been  at  the  Anniversary 
Meeting  and  Dinner,  because  the  latter  was  very  pleasant,  and 
the  former,  to  me,  very  disagreeable.  My  distrust  of  Sabine  is 
as  you  know  chronic,  and  I  went  determined  to  keep  careful 
watch  on  his  address,  lest  some  crafty  phrase  injurious  to  Dar- 
win should  be  introduced.    My  suspicions  were  justified.    The 


276  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xviii 

only  part  of  the  address  to  Darwin  written  by  Sabine  himself 
contained  the  following  passage: — 

"  Speaking  generally  apd  collectively,  we  have  expressly 
omitted  it  (Darwin's  theory)  from  the  grounds  of  our  award." 

Of  course  this  would  be  interpreted  by  everybody  as  mean- 
ing that,  after  due  discussion,  the  council  had  formally  resolved 
not  only  to  exclude  Darwin's  theory  from  the  grounds  of  the 
award,  but  to  g^ve  public  notice  through  the  president  that  they 
had  done  so,  and  furthermore,  that  Darwin's  friends  had  been  - 
base  enough  to  accept  an  honour  for  him  on  the  understanding 
that  in  receiving  it  he  should  be  publicly  insulted! 

I  felt  that  this  would  never  do,  and  therefore  when  the 
resolution  for  printing  the  address  was  moved,  I  made  a  speech 
which  I  took  care  to  keep  perfectly  cool  and  temperate,  disavow- 
ing all  intention  of  interfering  with  the  liberty  of  the  president 
to  say  what  he  pleased,  but  exercising  my  constitutional  right 
of  requiring  the  minutes  of  council  making  the  award  to  be 
read,  in  order  that  the  Society  might  be  informed  whether  the 
conditions  implied  by  Sabine  had  been  imposed  or  not. 

The  resolution  was  read,  and  of  course  nothing  of  the  kind 
appeared.  Sabine  didn't  exactly  like  it,  I  believe.  Both  Busk 
and  Falconer  remonstrated  against  the  passage  to  him,  and  I 
hope  it  will  be  withdrawn  when  the  address  is  printed.* 

If  not  there  will  be  an  awful  row,  and  I  for  one  will  show 
no  mercy. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  foundation  of  the  x  Club  towards  the  end  of  1864 
was  a  notable  event  for  Huxley  and  his  circle  of  scientific 
friends.  It  was  growing  more  and  more  difficult  for  them 
to  see  one  another  except  now  and  again  at  meetings  of  the 
learned  societies,  and  even  that  was  quite  uncertain.  The 
pressure  of  Huxley's  own  work  may  be  inferred  from  his 
letters  at  this  time  (especially  to  Darwin,  July  2,  1863,  and 
January  16,  1864).  Not  only  society,  but  societies  had  to 
be  almost  entirely  given  up.  Moreover,  the  distance  from 
one  another  at  which  some  of  these  friends  lived,  added 
another  difficulty,  so  that  Huxley  writes  to  Hooker  in  his 
"  remote  province  "  of  Kew :  "  I  wonder  if  we  are  ever  to 
meet  again  in  this  world."    Accordingly  in  January  1864, 

*  The  passage  stands  in  the  published  address,  but  followed  by 
another  passage  which  softens  it  down. 


i864  THE  X  CLUB  277 

Hooker  gladly  embraced  a  proposal  of  Huxley's  to  organise 
some  kind  of  regular  meeting,  a  proposal  which  bore  fruit 
in  the  establishment  of  the  x  Club.  On  November  3,  1864, 
the  first  meeting  was  held  at  St.  George's  Hotel,  Albe- 
marle Street,  where  they  resolved  to  dine  regularly  "  except 
when  Benham  cannot  have  us,  in  which  case  dine  at  the 
Athenaeum."  In  the  latter  eighties,  however,  the  Athenaeum 
became  the  regular  place  of  meeting,  and  it  was  here  that 
the  "  coming  of  age  "  of  the  club  was  celebrated  in  1885. 

Eight  members  met  at  the  first  meeting;  the  second 
meeting  brought  their  numbers  up  to  nine  by  the  addition 
of  W.  Spottiswoode,  but  the  proposal  to  elect  a  tenth  mem- 
ber was  never  carried  out.  On  the  principle  of  lucus  a  non 
lucendOy  this  lent  an  additional  appropriateness  to  the  sym- 
bol Xy  the  origin  of  which  Huxley  thus  describes  in  his 
reminiscences  of  Tyndall  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  for  Janu- 
ary 1894: — 

At  starting,  our  minds  were  terribly  exercised  over  the  name 
and  constitution  of  our  society.  As  opinions  on  this  g^rave 
matter  were  no  less  numerous  than  the  members — ^indeed  more 
so— we  finally  accepted  the  happy  suggestion  of  our  mathema- 
ticians to  call  it  the  x  Club;  and  the  proposal  of  some  genius 
among  us,  that  we  should  have  no  rules,  save  the  unwritten  law 
not  to  have  any,  was  carried  by  acclamation. 

Besides  Huxley,  the  members  of  the  club  were  as  fol- 
lows : — 

George  Busk,  F.R.S.  (1807-S7),  then  secretary  of  the 
Linnean  Society,  a  skilful  anatomist.* 

Edward  Frankland  (1825-1899),  For.  Sec.  R.S.,  K.C.B., 
then  Professor  of  Chemistry  in  the  Royal  Institution,  and 
afterwards  at  the  Royal  College  of  Science. 

Thomas  Archer  Hirst,  F.R.S.,  then  mathematical  master 
at  University  College  School,  f 

*  He  served  as  surgeon  to  the  hospital  ship  Dreadnought  at  Green- 
wich tiil  1856,  when  he  resigned,  and.  retiring  from  practice,  devoted 
himself  to  scientific  pursuits,  and  was  elected  President  of  the  College 
of  Surgeons  in  1871. 

t  In  1865  appointed  Professor  of  Physics ;  in  1867,  of  Pure  Mathe- 
matics, at  University  College,  London  ;  and  from  1873  to  1883  Director 


278  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xvrii 

Joseph  Dalton  Hooker,  F.R.S.,  K.C.S.I.,  Pres.  R.S. 
1873,  the  great  botanist,  then  Assistant  Director  at  Kew 
Gardens  to  his  father.  Sir. William  Hooker. 

Sir  John  Lubbock,  Bart.,  F.R.S.,  M.P.,  the  youngest 
of  the  nine,  who  had  already  made  his  mark  in  archaeology, 
and  was  then  preparing  to  bring  out  his  Prehistoric  Times. 

Herbert  Spencer,  who  had  already  published  Social 
Statistics,  Principles  of  Psychology,  and  First  Principles, 

William  Spottiswoode  (1825-1883),  F.R.S.,  Treasurer 
and  afterwards  President  R.S.  1878,  who  carried  on  the 
business  of  the  Queen's  printer  as  well  as  being  deeply 
versed  in  mathematics,  philosophy,  and  languages. 

John  Tyndall,  F.R.S.  (1820-18193),  who  had  been  for  the 
last  eleven  years  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  where  he  succeeded  Faraday  as  super- 
intendent. 

The  one  object,  then,  of  the  club  was  to  afford  a  certain 
meeting-ground  for  a  few  friends  who  were  bound  together 
by  personal  regard  and  community  of  scientific  interests,  yet 
were  in  danger  of  drifting  apart  under  the  stress  of  circum- 
stances. They  dined  together  on  the  first  Thursday  in  each 
month,  except  July,  August,  and  September,  before  the 
meeting  of  the  Royal  Society,  of  which  all  were  members 
excepting  Mr.  Spencer,  the  usual  dining  hour  being  six,  so 
that  they  should  be  in  good  time  for  the  society's  meeting  at 
eight;  and  a  minute  of  December  5,  1885,  when  Huxley 
was  treasurer  and  revived  the  ancient  custom  of  making 
some  note  of  the  conversation,  throws  light  on  the  habits 
of  the  club.  "  Got  scolded,"  he  writes,  "  for  dining  at  6.30. 
Had  to  prove  we  have  dined  at  6.30  for  a  long  time  by 
evidence  of  waiter.  (At  the  February  meeting,  however, 
"  agreed  to  fix  dinner  hour  six  hereafter.")  Talked  politics, 
scandal,  and  the  three  classes  of  witnesses — liars,  d— — d 
liars,  and  experts.  Huxley  gave  account  of  civil  list  pen- 
sion. Sat  to  the  unexampled  hour  of  10  p.m.,  except  Lub- 
bock who  had  to  go  to  Linnaean." 

of  Naval  Studies  at  the  Royal  Naval  College,  Greenwich  ;  an  oM  Mar- 
burg student,  and  intimate  friend  of  Tyndall,  whom  he  had  succeeded 
at  Queenwood  College  in  1853.     He  died  in  1892. 


1864  THE  X  CLUB  279 

For  some  time  there  was  a  summer  meeting,  which  con- 
sisted of  a  week-end  excursion  of  members  and  their  wives 
(x's  +  yv's,  as  the  correct  formula  ran)  to  some  place  like 
Burnham  or  Maidenhead,  Oxford  or  Windsor;  but  this 
grew  increasingly  difficult  to  arrange,  and  dropped  before 
very  long. 

Guests  were  not  excluded  from  the  dinners  of  the  club ; 
men  of  science  or  letters  of  almost  every  nationality  dined 
with  the  X  at  one  time  or  another ;  Darwin,  W.  K.  Clifford, 
Colenso,  Strachey,  Tollemache,  Helps;  Professors  Bain, 
Masson,  Robertson  Smith,  and  Bentham  the  botanist,  Mr. 
John  Morley,  Sir  D.  Galton,  Mr.  Jodrell,  the  founder  of 
several  scientific  lectureships;  Dr.  Klein;  the  Americans 
Marsh,  Oilman,  A.  Agassiz,  and  Youmans,  the  latter  of 
whom  met  here  several  of  the  contributors  to  the  Interna- 
tional Science  Series  organized  by  him;  and  continental 
representatives,  as  Helmholtz,  Laugel,  and  Comu. 

Small  as  the  club  was,  the  members  of  it  were  destined 
to  play  a  considerable  part  in  the  history  of  English  science. 
Five  of  them  received  the  Royal  Medal ;  three  the  Copley ; 
one  the  Rumford ;  six  were  Presidents  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation; three  Associates  of  the  Institute  of  France;  and 
from  amongst  them  the  Royal  Society  chose  a  Secretary, 
a  Foreign  Secretary,  a  Treasurer,  and  three  successive 
Presidents. 

I  think,  originally  (writes  Huxley,  Lc.)  there  was  some 
vag^e  notion  of  associating  representatives  of  each  branch  of 
science;  at  any  rate,  the  nine  who  eventually  came  together 
could  have  managed,  among  us,  to  contribute  most  of  the  articles 
to  a  scientific  Encyclopaedia. 

They  included  leading  representatives  of  half  a  dozen 
branches  of  science: — mathematics,  physics,  philosophy, 
chemistry,  botany,  and  biology;  and  all  were  animated  by 
similar  ideas  of  the  high  function  of  science,  and  of  the 
great  Society  which  should  be  the  chief  representative  of 
science  in  this  country.  However  unnecessary,  it  was  per- 
haps not  unnatural  that  a  certain  jealousy  of  the  club  and 
its  possible  influence  grew  up  in  some  quarters.  But  what- 
ever influence  fell  to  it  as  it  were  incidentally — ^and  earnest 
19 


28o  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xvin 

men  with  such  opportunities  of  mutual  understanding  and 
such  ideals  of  action  could  not  fail  to  have  some  influence 
on  the  progress  of  scientific  organization — it  was  assuredly 
not  sectarian  nor  exerted  for  party  purposes  during  the 
twenty-eight  years  of  the  club's  existence. 

I  believe  that  the  x  (continues  Huxley)  had  the  credit  of 
being  a  sort  of  scientific  caucus,  or  ring,  with  some  people.  In 
fact,  two  distinguished  scientific  colleagues  of  mine  once  car- 
ried on  a  conversation  (which  I  g^ravely  ignored)  across  me, 
in  the  smoking-room  of  the  Athenaeum,  to  this  effect,  "  I  say, 
A.,  do  you  know  anything  about  the  x  Club  ?  "  "  Oh  yes,  B., 
I  have  heard  of  it  What  do  they  do  ?  "  "  Well,  they  govern 
scientific  affairs,  and  really,  on  the  whole,  they  don't  do  it  badly." 
If  my  good  friends  could  only  have  been  present  at  a  few  of  our 
meetings,  they  would  have  formed  a  much  less  exalted  idea  of 
us,  and  would,  I  fear,  have  been  much  shocked  at  the  sadly 
frivolous  tone  of  our  ordinary  conversation. 

The  X  club  is  probably  unique  in  the  smallness  of  its 
numbers,  the  intellectual  eminence  of  its  members,  and  the 
length  of  its  unchanged  existence.  The  nearest  parallel  is  to 
be  found  in  "  The  Club."  *  Like  the  x,  "  The  Club  "  bepn 
with  eight  members  at  its  first  meeting,  and  of  the  original 
members  Johnson  lived  twenty  years,  Reynolds  twenty- 
eight,  Burke  thirty-three,  and  Bennet  Langton  thirty-seven. 
But  the  ranks  were  earlier  broken.  Within  ten  years  Gold- 
smith died,  and  he  was  followed  in  a  twelvemonth  by 
Nugent,  and  five  years  later  by  Beauclerk  and  Chamier. 
Moreover,  the  eight  were  soon  increased  to  twelve ;  then  to 
twenty  and  finally  to  forty,  while  the  gaps  were  filled  up  as 
they  occurred. 

In  the  X,  on  the  contrary,  nearly  nineteen  years  passed 
before  the  original  circle  was  broken  by  the  death  of  Spottis- 
woode.  From  1864  to  Spottiswoode's  death  in  1883  the 
original  circle  remained  unbroken;  the  meetings  "were 
steadily  continued  for  some  twenty  years,  before  our  ranks 
began  to  thin;  and  one  by  one,  geistige  Naturen  such  as 

*  Of  which  Huxley  was  elected  a  member  in  1884.     Tyndall  and 
Hooker  were  also  members. 


i864  THE  X  CLUB  28 1 

those  for  which  the  poet  *  so  willingly  paid  the  ferryman, 
silent  but  not  unregarded,  took  the  vacated  places."  The 
peculiar  constitution  of  the  club  scarcely  seemed  to  admit 
of  new  members;  not,  at  all  events,  without  altering  the 
unique  relation  of  friendship  joined  to  common  experience 
of  struggle  and  success  which  had  lasted  so  long.  After 
the  death  of  Spottiswoode  and  Busk,  and  the  ill-health  of 
other  members,  the  election  of  new  members  was  indeed 
mooted,  but  the  proposal  was  ultimately  negatived.  Hux- 
ley's opinion  on  this  point  appears  from  letters  to  Sir  E. 
Frankland  in  1886  and  to  Sir  J.  D.  Hooker  in  1888. 

As  for  the  filling  up  the  vacancies  in  the  x,  I  am  disposed  to 
take  Tyndairs  view  of  the  matter.  Our  little  club  had  no  very 
definite  object  beyond  preventing  a  few  men  who  were  united  by 
strong  personal  sympathies  from  drifting  apart  by  the  pressure 
of  busy  lives. 

Nobody  could  have  foreseen  or  expected  twenty  odd  years 
ago  when  we  first  met,  that  we  were  destined  to  play  the  parts 
we  have  since  played,  and  it  is  in  the  nature  of  things  impossible 
that  any  of  the  new  members  proposed  (much  as  we  may  like 
and  respect  them  all),  can  carry  on  the  work  which  has  so 
strangely  fallen  to  us. 

An  axe  with  a  new  head  and  a  new  handle  may  be  the  same 
axe  in  one  sense,  but  it  is  not  the  familiar  friend  with  which  one 
has  cut  one's  way  through  wood  and  brier. 

And  in  the  other  letter — 

What  with  the  lame  dog  condition  of  T)mdall  and  Hirst  and 
Spencer  and  my  own  recurrent  illnesses,  the  x  is  not  satisfactory. 
But  I  don't  see  that  much  will  come  from  putting  new  patches 
in.  The  x  really  has  no  raison  d'etre  beyond  the  personal  attach- 
ment of  its  original  members.  Frankland  told  me  of  the  names 
that  had  been  mentioned,  and  none  could  be  more  personally 
welcome  to  me  .  .  .  but  somehow  or  other  they  seem  out  of 
place  in  the  x. 

*  Nimm  dann  Fuhrroann, 
Nimm  die  Miethe 
Die  Ich  gerne  dreifach  biete  ; 
Zwei,  die  eben  tiberfuhren 
Waren  geistige  Naturen. 


282  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xviii 

However,  I  am  not  going  to  stand  out  against  the  general 
wish,  and  I  shall  agree  to  anything  that  is  desired. 

Again — 

The  club  has  never  had  any  purpose  except  the  purely  per- 
sonal object  of  bringing  together  a  few  friends  who  did  not 
want  to  drift  apart.  It  has  happened  that  these  cronies  had 
developed  into  big-wigs  of  various  kinds,  and  therefore  the  club 
has  incidentally — ^I  plight  say  accidentally — ^had  a  good  deal 
of  influence  in  the  scientific  world.  But  if  I  had  to  propose  to 
a  man  to  join,  and  he  were  to  say.  Well,  what  is  your  object?  I 
should  have  to  reply  like  the  needy  knife-grinder,  "  Object, 
God  bless  you,  sir,  we've  none  to  show." 

As  he  wrote  elsewhere  (toe.  cit.) : — 

Later  on,  there  were  attempts  to  add  other  members,  which 
at  last  became  wearisome,  and  had  to  be  arrested  by  the  agree- 
ment that  no  proposition  of  that  kind  should  be  entertained, 
unless  the  name  of  the  new  member  suggested  contained  all 
the  consonants  absent  from  the  names  of  the  old  ones.  In  the 
lack  of  Slavonic  friends  this  decision  put  an  end  to  the  possi- 
bility of  increase. 

After  the  death,  in  February  1892,  of  Hirst,  a  most 
devoted  supporter  of  the  club,  who  "  would,  I  believe,  repre- 
sent it  in  his  sole  person  rather  than  pass  the  day  over," 
only  one  more  meeting  took  place,  in  the  following  month. 
With  five  of  the  six  survivors  domiciled  far  from  town, 
meeting  after  meeting  fell  through,  until  the  treasurer  wrote, 
**  My  idea  is  that  it  is  best  to  let  it  die  out  unobserved,  and 
say  nothing  about  its  decease  to  anyone." 

Thus  it  came  to  pass  that  the  March  meeting  of  the 
club  in  1893  remained  its  last.  No  ceremony  ushered  it 
out  of  existence.  Its  end  exemplified  a  saying  of  Sir  J. 
Hooker's,  "  At  our  ages  clubs  are  an  anachronism."  It  had 
met  240  times,  yet,  curious  to  say,  although  the  average 
attendance  up  to  1883  was  seven  out  of  nine,  the  full 
strength  of  the  club  only  met  on  twenty-seven  occasions. 


CHAPTER   XIX 
i86s 

The  progress  of  the  American  civil  war  suggested  to 
Huxley  in  1865  the  text  for  an  article,  "  Emancipation, 
Black  and  White,"  the  emancipation  of  the  negro  in  Amer- 
ica and  the  emancipation  of  women  in  England,  which  ap- 
peared in  the  Reader  of  May  20  (Coll.  Ess.  iii.  66).  His  main 
argument  for  the  emancipation  of  the  negro  was  that  al- 
ready given  in  his  letter  to  his  sister  (p.  272) ;  namely,  that 
in  accordance  with  the  moral  law  that  no  human  being  can 
arbitrarily  dominate  over  another  without  grievous  damage 
to  his  own  nature,  the  master  will  benefit  by  freedom  more 
than  the  freed-man.  And  just  as  the  negro  will  never  take 
the  highest  places  in  civilisation  yet  need  not  to  be  confined 
to  the  lowest,  so,  he  argues,  it  will  be  with  women.  "  Na- 
ture's old  salique  law  will  never  be  repealed,  and  no  change 
of  dynasty  will  be  effected,"  although  "  whatever  argument 
justifies  a  given  education  for  all  boys  justifies  its  applica- 
tion to  girls  as  well." 

With  this  may  be  compared  his  letter  to  the  Titptes  of 
July  8,  1874  (Chapter  XXVH). 

No  scientific  monographs  were  published  in  1865  by 
Huxley,  but  his  lectures  of  the  previous  winter  to  working- 
men  on  "  The  Various  Races  of  Mankind  "  are  an  indication 
of  his  continued  interest  in  Ethnology,  which,  set  going,  as 
has  been  said,  by  the  promise  to  revise  the  woodcuts  for 
Lyell's  book,  found  expression  in  such  papers  as  the 
"  Human  Remains  in  the  Shell  Mounds,"  1863 ;  the 
"Neanderthal  Remains"  of  1864;  the  "Methods  and 
Results  of  Ethnology"  of  1865;  his  FuUerian  Lectures  of 

283 


284 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xix 


1866-67 ;  papers  on  "  Two  Widely  Contrasted  Forms  of 
the  Human  Cranium  "  of  1866  and  1868;  the  "  Patagonian 
Skulls"  of  1868;  and  "Some  Fixed  Points  in  British 
Ethnology  "  of  1871— 

His  published  ethnological  papers  (says  Sir  Michael  Foster) 
are  not  numerous,  nor  can  they  be  taken  as  a  measure  of  his  in- 
fluence on  this  branch  of  study.  In  many  ways  he  has  made 
himself  felt,  not  the  least  by  the  severity  with  which  on  the  one 
hand  he  repressed  the  pretensions  of  shallow  persons  who,  tak- 
ing advantage  of  the  glamour  of  the  Darwinian  doctrine,  talked 
nonsense  in  the  name  of  anthropological  science,  and  on  the 
other  hand,  exposed  those  who  in  the  structure  of  the  brain  or 
of  other  parts,  saw  an  impassable  gulf  between  man  and  the 
monkey.  The  episode  of  the  "  hippocampus  "  stirred  for  a  while 
not  only  science  but  the  general  public.  He  used  his  influence, 
already  year  by  year  growing  more  and  more  powerful,  to  keep 
the  study  of  the  natural  history  of  man  within  its  proper  lines, 
and  chiefly  with  this  end  in  view  held  the  Presidential  Chair 
of  the  Ethnological  Society  in  1869-70.  It  was  mainly  through 
his  influence  that  this  older  Ethnological  Society  was,  a  year 
later,  in  187 1,  amalgamated  with  a  newer  rival  society,  the 
Anthropological,  under  the  title  of  "The  Anthropological  In- 
stitute." 

During  this  time  he  was  constantly  occupied  with 
paleontological  work,  as  the  following  letter  to  Sir  C. 
Lyell  indicates — 

Jermyn  Street,  JSTov,  27,  1865. 

My  dear  Sir  Charles — I  returned  last  night  from  a  hasty 
journey  to  Ireland,  whither  I  betook  myself  on  Thursday  night, 
being  attracted  vulture-wise  by  the  scent  of  a  quantity  of  car- 
boniferous corpses.  The  journey  was  as  well  worth  the  trouble 
as  any  I  ever  undertook,  seeing  that  in  a  morning's  work  I 
turned  out  ten  genera  of  vertebrate  animals  of  which  five  are 
certainly  new ;  and  of  these  four  are  Labyrinthodonts,  amphibia 
of  new  types.  These  four  are  baptised  Ophiderpeton,  Lepter- 
peton,  Ichthyerpeton,  Keraterpeton.  They  all  have  ossified 
spinal  columns  and  limbs.  The  special  interest  attaching  to  the 
two  first  is  that  they  represent  a  type  of  Labyrinthodonts  hitherto 
unknown,  and  corresponding  with  Siren  and  Amphiuma  among 
living  Amphibia.  Ophiderpeton,  for  example,  is  like  an  eel, 
about  three  feet  long  with  small  fore  legs  and  rudimentary 
hind  ones. 


1865  LETTERS  TO  DARWIN  285 

In  the  year  of  grace  1861,  there  were  three  genera  of  Eu- 
ropean carboniferous  Labyrinthodonts  known,  Archegosaurus, 
Scleroceplus,  Parabatrachus. 

The  vertebral  column  of  Archegosaurus  was  alone  known, 
and  it  was  in  a  remarkably  imperfect  state  of  ossification.  Since 
that  date,  by  a  succession  of  odd  chances,  seven  new  genera 
have  come  into  my  hands,  and  of  these  six  certainly  have  well- 
ossified  and  developed  vertebral  columns. 

I  reckon  there  are  now  about  thirty  genera  of  Labyrintho- 
donts known  from  all  parts  of  the  world  and  all  deposits.  Of 
these  eleven  have  been  established  by  myself  in  the  course  of 
the  last  half-dozen  years,  upon  remains  which  have  come  into 
my  hands  by  the  merest  chance. 

Five  and  twenty  years  ago,  all  the  world  but  yourself  be- 
lieved that  a  vertebrate  animal  of  higher  organisation  than  a 
fish  in  the  carboniferous  rocks  never  existed.  I  think  the  whole 
story  is  not  a  bad  comment  upon  negative  evidence. 

/an.  I,  1865. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  cannot  do  better  than  write  my  first 
letter  of  the  year  to  you,  if  it  is  only  to  wish  you  and  yours  your 
fair  share  (and  more  than  your  fair  share,  if  need  be)  of  good 
for  the  New  Year.  The  immediate  cause  of  my  writing,  how- 
ever, was  turning  out  my  pocket  and  finding  therein  an  unan- 
swered letter  of  yours  containing  a  scrap  on  which  is  a  request 
for  a  photograph,  which  I  am  afraid  I  overlooked.  At  least  I 
hope  I  did,  and  then  my  manners  won't  be  so  bad.  I  enclose  the 
latest  version  of  myself. 

I  wish  I  could  follow  out  your  suggestion  about  a  book  on 
zoology.  (By  the  way  please  to  tell  Miss  Emma  that  my  last 
book  is  a  book.*  Marry  come  up  I  Does  her  ladyship  call  it  a 
pamphlet?) 

But  I  assure  you  that  writing  is  a  perfect  pest  to  me  unless 
I  am  interested,  and  not  only  a  bore  but  a  very  slow  process.  I 
have  some  popular  lectures  on  Physiology,f  which  have  been 

*  The  first  volume  of  his  Hunterian  Lectures  on  Comparative  Anat- 
omy, A  second  volume  never  appeared.  Miss  Darwin,  as  her  father 
wrote  to  Huxley  after  the  delivery  of  his  Working  Men's  Lectures  in 
1862,  **  was  reading  your  Lectures,  and  ended  by  saying,  *I  wish  he 
would  write  a  book.*  I  answered,  *  he  has  just  written  a  great  book 
on  the  skull.'  *  I  don't  call  that  a  book,'  she  replied,  and  added,  *  I 
want  something  that  people  can  read  ;  he  does  write  so  well.'" 

t  See  letter  of  April  22,  1863. 


286  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xix 

half  done  for  more  than  a  twelvemonth,  and  I  hate  the  sight  of 
them  because  the  subject  no  longer  interests  me,  and  my  head  is 
full  of  other  matters. 

So  I  have  just  done  giving  a  set  of  lectures  to  working-men 
on  "  The  Various  Races  of  Mankind/'  which  really  would  make 
a  book  in  Miss  Emma's  sense  of  the  word,  and  which  I  have  had 
reported.  But  when  am  I  to  work  them  up  ?  Twenty- four  Hun- 
terian  Lectures  loom  between  me  and  Easter.  I  am  dying  to  get 
out  the  second  volume  of  the  book  that  is  not  a  book,  but  in  vain. 

I  trust  you  are  better,  though  the  last  news  I  had  of  you 
from  Lubbock  was  not  so  encouraging  as  I  could  have  wished. 

With  best  wishes  and  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Darwin — Ever 
yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Thanks  for  "  fin  Darwin,"  I  had  it 

26  Abbey  Place,  Jan,  15,  1865. 

My  dear  Darwin — Many  thanks  for  Deslongchamps'  paper 
which  I  do  not  possess. 

I  received  another  important  publication  yesterday  morning 
in  the  shape  of  a  small  but  hearty  son,  who  came  to  light  a  little 
before  six.  The  wife  is  getting  on  capitally,  and  we  are  both 
greatly  rejoiced  at  having  another  boy,  as  your  godson  ran  great 
risks  of  being  spoiled  by  a  harem  of  sisters. 

The  leader  in  the  Reader  is  mine,  and  I  am  glad  you  like  it. 
The  more  so  as  it  has  got  me  into  trouble  with  some  of  my 
friends.  However,  the  revolution  that  is  going  on  is  not  to  be 
made  with  rose-water. 

I  wish  if  anything  occurs  to  you  that  would  improve  the 
scientific  part  of  the  Reader,  you  would  let  me  know  as  I  am  in 
great  measure  responsible  for  it 

I  am  sorry  not  to  have  a  better  account  of  your  health. 
With  kind  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Darwin  and  the  rest  of  your 
circle — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermyn  Street,  May  i,  1865. 
My  dear  Darwin — I  send  you  by  this  post  a  booklet  ♦  none 
of  which  is  much  worth  your  reading,  while  of  nine-tenths  of  it 
you  may  say  as  the  man  did  who  had  been  trying  to  read  John- 
son's Dictionary,  "that  the  words  were  fine,  but  he  couldn't 
make  much  of  the  story." 

♦Probably   **A  Catalogue  of    the   Collection  of    Fossils  in   the 
Museum  of  Practical  Geology,"  etc. 


1865  LETTERS  TO  DARWIN  287 

But  perhaps  the  young  lady  who  has  been  kind  enough  to 
act  as  taster  of  my  books  heretofore  will  read  the  explanatory 
notice,  and  give  me  her  ideas  thereupon  (always  recollecting 
that  almost  the  whole  of  it  was  written  in  the  pre-Darwinian 
epoch.) 

I  do  not  hear  very  good  accounts  of  you — ^to  my  sorrow — 
though  rumours  have  reached  me  that  the  opus  magnum*  is 
completely  developed  though  not  yet  bom. 

I  am  grinding  at  the  mill  and  getting  a  little  tired.  My 
belongings  flourishing  as  I  hope  you  are. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermvn  Street,  May  89,  1865. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  meant  to  have  written  to  you  yesterday 
to  say  how  glad  I  shall  be  to  read  whatever  you  like  to  send  me. 
•  I  have  to  lecture  at  the  Royal  Institution  this  week,  but 
after  Friday,  my  time  will  be  more  at  my  own  disposal  than 
usual;  and  as  always  I  shall  be  most  particularly  glad  to  be  of 
any  use  to  you. 

Any  glimmer  of  light  on  the  question  you  speak  of  is  of  the 
utmost  importance,  and  I  shall  be  immensely  interested  in  learn- 
ing your  views.  And  of  course  I  need  not  add  I  will  do  my  best 
to  upset  them.    That  is  the  nature  of  the  beast. 

I  had  a  letter  from  one  of  the  ablest  of  the  younger  zoologists 
of  Germany,  Haeckel,  the  other  day,  in  which  this  passage 
occurs : — 

"The  Darwinian  Theory,  the  establishment  and  develop- 
ment of  which  is  the  object  [of]  all  my  scientific  labours,  has 
gained  ground  immensely  in  Germany  (where  it  was  at  first 
so  misunderstood)  during  the  last  two  years,  and  I  entertain 
no  doubt  that  it  will  before  long  be  everywhere  victorious." 
And  he  adds  that  I  dealt  far  too  mildly  with  Kolliker. 

With  kindest  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Darwin  and  your  family 
— Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

This  year,  as  is  seen  from  the  foregoing,  he  was  again 
in  direct  communication  with  Professor  Ernst  Haeckel  of 
Jena,  the  earliest  and  strongest  champion  of  Darwinian 
ideas  in  Germany.  The  latter  wished  to  enlarge  his  ob- 
servations by  joining  some  English  scientific  expedition,  if 
any  such  were  in  preparation,  but  was  dissuaded  by  the  fol- 

*  On  Pangenesis, 


288  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xix 

lowing  reply.  The  expected  book  of  Darwin's  was  the 
Pangenesis,  and  this  is  also  referred  to  in  the  three  succeed- 
ing letters  to  Darwin  himself. 

The  Royal  School  of  Mines, 
Jermyn  Street,  London, /««^  7,  1865. 

My  dear  Sir — Many  thanks  for  your  letter,  and  for  the  wel- 
come present  of  your  portrait,  which  I  shall  value  greatly,  and 
in  exchange  for  which  I  enclose  my  own.  Indeed  I  have  delayed 
writing  to  you  in  order  to  be  able  to  send  the  last  "  new  and  im- 
proved "  edition  of  myself. 

I  wish  it  were  in  my  power  to  help  you  to  any  such  appoint- 
ment as  that  you  wish  for.  But  I  do  not  think  our  government 
is  likely  to  send  out  any  scientific  expedition  to  the  South  Seas. 
There  is  a  talk  about  a  new  Arctic  expedition,  but  I  doubt  if 
it  will  come  to  much,  and  even  if  it  should  be  organised  I  couTd 
not  recommend  your  throwing  yourself  away  in  an  undertaking 
which  promises  more  frost-bites  than  anything  else  to  a  natu- 
ralist. 

In  truth,  though  I  have  felt  and  can  still  feel  the  attraction  of 
foreign  travel  in  all  its  strength,  I  would  counsel  you  to  stop  at 
home,  and  as  Gk)ethe  says,  find  your  America  here.  There  are 
plenty  of  people  who  can  observe  and  whose  places,  if  they  are 
expended  by  fever  or  shipwreck,  can  be  well  enough  filled  up. 
But  there  are  very  few  who  can  grapple  with  the  higher  prob- 
lems of  science  as  you  have  done  and  are  doing,  and  we  cannot 
afford  to  lose  you.  It  is  the  organisation  of  knowledge  rather 
than  its  increase  which  is  wanted  just  now.  And  I  think  you 
can  help  in  this  great  undertaking  better  in  Germany  than  in 
New  Zealand. 

Darwin  has  been  very  ill  for  more  than  a  year  past,  so  ill,  in 
fact,  that  his  recovery  was  at  one  time  doubtful.  But  he  con- 
trives to  work  in  spite  of  fate,  and  I  hope  that  before  long  we 
shall  have  a  new  book  from  him. 

By  way  of  consolation  I  sent  him  an  extract  from  your  letter 
touching  the  progress  of  his  views. 

I  am  glad  that  you  did  not  think  my  critique  of  Kolliker  too 
severe.  He  is  an  old  friend  of  mine,  and  I  desired  to  be  as 
gentle  as  possible,  while  performing  the  unpleasant  duty  of 
showing  how  thoroughly  he  had  misunderstood  the  question. 

I  shall  look  with  great  interest  for  your  promised  book. 
Lately  I  have  [been]  busy  with  Ethnological  questions,  and  I 
fear  I  shall  not  altogether  please  your  able  friend  Professor 


i865  LETTERS  TO  DARWIN  289 

Schleicher  in  some  remarks  I  have  had  to  make  upon  the  sup- 
posed value  of  philological  evidence. 

May  we  hope  to  see  you  at  the  meeting  of  the  British  Asso- 
ciation at  Birmingham?  It  would  give  many,  and  especially 
myself,  much  pleasure  to  become  personally  acquainted  with 
you. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermyn  Street, /««^  i,  1865. 

My  dear  Darwin — ^Your  MS.*  reached  me  safely  last 
evening. 

I  could  not  refrain  from  glancing  over  it  on  the  spot,  and  I 
perceive  I  shall  have  to  put  on  my  sharpest  spectacles  and  best 
considering  cap. 

I  shall  not  write  till  I  have  thought  well  on  the  whole  sub- 
ject— Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermyn  Street, /k/k  16,  1865. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  have  just  counted  the  pages  of  your 
MS.  to  see  that  they  are  all  right,  and  packed  it  up  to  send  you 
by  post,  registered,  so  I  hope  it  will  reach  you  safely.  I  should 
have  sent  it  yesterday,  but  people  came  in  and  bothered  me 
about  post  time. 

I  did  not  at  all  mean  by  what  I  said  to  stop  you  from  pub- 
lishing your  views,  and  I  really  should  not  like  to  take  that  re- 
sponsibility. Somebody  rummaging  among  your  papers  half  a 
century  hence  will  find  Pangenesis  and  say,  "  See  this  wonderful 
anticipation  of  our  modern  theories,  and  that  stupid  ass  Huxley 
preventing  his  publishing  them."  And  then  the  Carlyleans  of 
that  day  will  make  me  a  text  for  holding  forth  upon  Uie  differ- 
ence between  mere  vulpine  sharpness  and  genius. 

I  am  not  going  to  be  made  a  horrid  example  of  in  that  way. 
But  all  I  say  is,  publish  your  views,  not  so  much  in  the  shape  of 
formed  conclusions,  as  of  hypothetical  developments  of  the  only 
clue  at  present  accessible,  and  don't  give  the  Philistines  more 
chances  of  blaspheming  than  you  can  help. 

I  am  very  grieved  to  hear  that  you  have  been  so  ill  again. — 
Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

26  Abbey  Place,  Oct.  2,  1865. 
My  dear  Darwin — "  This  comes  hoping  you  are  well,"  and 
for  no  other  purpose  than  to  say  as  much.    I  am  just  back  from 
seven  weeks'  idleness  at  Littlehampton  with  my  wife  and  chil- 

*  Of  Pangenesis, 


290  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xix 

dren,  die  first  time  I  have  had  a  holiday  of  any  extent  with 
them  for  years. 

We  are  all  flourishing — ^the  babies  particularly  so— and  I 
find  myself  rather  loth  to  begin  grinding  at  the  mill  again. 
There  is  a  vein  of  laziness  in  me  which  crops  out  unconunonly 
strong  in  your  godson,  who  is  about  the  idlest,  jolliest  young 
four  year  old  I  know. 

You  will  have  been  as  much  grieved  as  I  have  been  about 
dear  old  Hooker.  According  to  the  last  accounts,  however,  he 
is  mending,  and  I  hope  to  see  him  in  the  pristine  vigour  again 
before  long. 

My  wife  is  gone  to  bed  or  she  would  join  me  in  the  kindest 
regards  and  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Darwin  and  your  family. — 
Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  sound  judgment  and  nice  sense  of  honour  for  which 
Huxley  was  known  among  his  friends  often  led  those  who 
were  in  difficulties  to  appeal  to  him  for  advice.  About  this 
time  a  dispute  arose  over  an  alleged  case  of  unacknowledged 
**  conveyance  "  of  information.  Writing  to  Hooker,  he  says 
the  one  party  to  the  quarrel  failed  to  "  set  the  affair  straight 
with  half  a  dozen  words  of  frank  explanation  as  he  might 
have  done ; "  as  to  the  other,  "  like  all  quiet  and  mild  men 
who  do  get  a  grievance,  he  became  about  twice  as  '  wud ' 
as  Berserks  like  you  and  me."  Both  came  to  him,  so  that 
he  says,  "  I  have  found  it  very  difficult  to  deal  honestly  with 
both  sides  without  betraying  the  confidence  of  either  or 
making  matters  worse."  Happily,  with  his  help,  matters 
reached  a  peaceful  solution,  and  his  final  comment  is — 

I  don't  mind  fighting  to  the  death  in  a  good  big  row,  but 
when  A  and  B  are  supplying  themselves  from  C's  orchard,  I 
don't  think  it  is  very  much  worth  while  to  dispute  whether  B 
filled  his  pockets  directly  from  the  trees  or  indirectly  helped 
himself  to  the  contents  of  A's  basket.  If  B  has  so  helped  him- 
self, he  certainly  ought  to  say  so  like  a  man,  but  if  I  were  A, 
I  would  not  much  care  whether  he  did  or  not 

has  been  horribly  disgusted  about  it,  but  I  am  not  sure 

the  discipline  may  not  have  opened  his  eyes  to  new  and  useful 
aspects  of  nature. 

The  summer  of  1865  saw  the  inception  of  an  educational 
experiment — ^an  International  Education  Society — ^to  which 


i865  THE  INTERNATIONAL  COLLEGE  29I 

Huxley  gladly  gave  his  support  as  a  step  in  the  right  direc- 
tion. He  had  long  been  convinced  of  the  inadequacy  of 
existing  forms  of  education — survivals  from  the  needs  of  a 
bygone  age — ^to  prepare  for  the  new  forms  into  which  in- 
tellectual life  was  passing.  That  educators  should  be  con- 
tent to  bring  up  the .  young  generation  in  the  modes  of 
thought  which  satisfied  their  forefathers  three  centuries  ago, 
as  if  no  change  had  passed  over  the  world  since  then,  filled 
him  with  mingled  amazement  and  horror. 

The  outcome  of  the  scheme  was  the  International  Col- 
lege, at  Spring  Grove,  Isleworth,  under  the  headmastership 
of  Dr.  Leonhard  Schmitz ;  one  of  the  chief  members  of  the 
committee  being  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir)  William  Smith,  while 
at  the  head  of  the  Society  was  Richard  Cobden,  under  whose 
presidency  it  had  been  registered  some  time  before.  John 
Stuart  Mill,  however,  refused  to  join,  considering  that  this 
was  not  the  most  needed  reform  in  education,  and  that  he 
could  not  support  a  school  in  which  the  ordinary  theology 
was  taught. 

An  article  in  the  Reader  for  June  17,  1865,  sketches  the 
plan.  The  design  was  to  give  a  liberal  education  to  boys 
whether  intended  for  a  profession  or  for  commerce.  The 
education  for  both  was  the  same  up  to  a  certain  point,  cor- 
responding to  that  given  in  our  higher  schools,  together 
with  foreign  languages  and  the  elements  of  physical  and 
social  science,  after  which  the  courses  bifurcated.*  Special 
stress  was  laid  on  modem  languages,  both  for  themselves 
and  as  a  preparation  and  help  for  classical  teaching.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  International  College  was  one  of  three  paral- 
lel institutions  in  England,  France,  and  Germany,  where  a 
boy  could  in  turn  acquire  a  sound  knowledge  of  all  three 
languages  while  continuing  the  same  course  of  education. 
The  Franco-Prussian  war  of  1870,  however,  proved  fatal  to 
the  scheme. 

Some  letters  to  his  friend  Dr.  W.  K.  Parker,  f  show  the 

*  For  a  fuller  account  of  the  scientific  education  see  p.  330. 

f  A  man  of  whom  he  wrote  (preface  to  Prof.  Jeffery  Parker's  Li/f 
of  W.  JC.  Parker^  1893),  that  **  in  him  the  genius  of  an  artist  struggled 
with  that  of  a  philosopher,  and  not  unfrequently  the  latter  got  the 


292 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xix 


good-fellowship  which  existed  between  them,  as  well  as  the 
interest  he  took  in  the  style  and  success  of  Parker's  work. 
Parker  was  hard  at  work  on  Birds,  a  subject  in  which  his 
friend  and  leader  also  was  deeply  interested,  and  was  in- 
deed preparing  an  important  book  upon  it. 

Referring  to  his  candidature  for  the  Royal  Society,  he 
writes  on  February  21,  1865 :  "  With  reference  to  your 
candidature,  I  am  ready  to  bring  your  name  forward  when- 
ever you  like,  and  to  back  you  with  *  all  my  might,  power, 
amity,  and  authority,'  as  Essex  did  Bacon  (you  need  not 
serve  me  as  Bacon  did  Essex  afterwards),  but  my  impres- 
sion has  been  that  you  did  not  wish  to  come  forward  this 
year." 

And  on  November  2,  1866,  congratulating  him  on  his 
"  well-earned  honour  "  of  the  F.R.S. — "  Go  on  and  prosper. 
These  are  not  the  things  wise  men  work  for;  but  it  is  not 
the  less  proper  of  a  wise  man  to  take  them  when  they  come 
unsought." 

26  Abbey  Place,  Dec,  3,  1865. 

My  dear  Parker — I  have  been  so  terribly  pressed  by  my 
work  that  I  have  only  just  been  able  to  finish  the  reading  of 
your  paper. 

Very  few  pieces  of  work  which  have  fallen  in  my  way  come 
near  your  account  of  the  Struthious  skull  in  point  of  clearness 
and  completeness.  It  is  a  most  admirable  essay,  and  will  make 
an  epoch  in  this  kind  of  inquiry. 

I  want  you,  however,  to  remodel  the  introduction,  and  to 
make  some  unessential  but  convenient  difference  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  some  of  the  figures. 

Secondly,  full  as  the  appendix  is  of  most  valuable  and  in- 
teresting matter,  I  advise  you  for  the  present  to  keep  it  back. 

My  reason  is  that  you  have  done  justice  neither  to  yourself 
nor  to  your  topics,  and  that  if  the  appendix  is  printed  as  it 
stands,  your  labour  will  be  in  great  measure  lost. 

You  start  subjects  enough  for  half  a  dozen  papers,  and 
partly  from  the  compression  thus  resulting,  and  partly  from  the 

worst  of  the  contest."  He  speaks  too  of  his  **  minute  accuracy  In 
observation  and  boundless  memory  for  details  and  imagination  which 
absolutely  rioted  in  the  scenting  out  of  subtle  and  often  far-fetched 
analogies." 


i865  LETTER  TO  DR.   PARKER  293 

absence  of  illustrations,  I  do  not  believe  there  are  half  a  dozen 
men  in  Europe  who  will  be  able  to  follow  you.  Furthermore, 
though  the  appendix  is  relevant  enough— every  line  of  it — ^to 
those  who  have  dived  deep,  as  you  and  I  have — to  any  one  else 
it  has  all  the  aspects  of  a  string  of  desultory  discussions.  As 
your  father  confessor,  I  forbid  the  publication  of  the  appendix. 
After  having  had  all  this  trouble  with  you  I  am  not  going  to 
have  you  waste  your  powers  for  want  of  a  little  method,  so  I 
tell  you. 

What  you  are  to  do  is  this.  You  are  to  rewrite  the  intro- 
duction and  to  say  that  the  present  paper  is  the  first  of  a  series 
on  the  structure  of  the  vertebrate  skull ;  that  the  second  will  be 
"  On  the  development  of  the  osseous  cranium  of  the  Common 
Fowl "  [and  here  (if  you  are  good),  I  will  permit  you  to  intro- 
duce the  episode  on  cartilage  and  membrane  (illegible)];  the 
third  will  be  "  On  the  chief  modifications  of  the  cranium  ob- 
served in  the  Sauropsida." 

The  fourth,  "  On  the  mammalian  skull." 
The  fifth,  "  On  the  skull  of  the  Ichthyopsida." 
I  will  give  you  two  years  from  this  time  to  execute  these  five 
memoirs;  and  then  if  you  have  stood  good-temperedly  the 
amount  of  badgering  and  bullying  you  will  get  from  me  when- 
ever you  come  dutifully  to  report  progress,  you  shall  be  left  to 
your  own  devices  in  the  third  year  to  publish  a  paper  on  "  The 
general  structure  and  theory  of  the  vertebrate  skull." 

You  have  a  brilliant  field  before  you,  and  a  start  such  that  no 
one  is  likely  to  catch  you.  Sit  deliberately  down  over  against 
the  city,  conquer  it  and  make  it  your  own,  and  don't  be  wasting 
powder  in  knocking  down  odd  bastions  with  random  shells. 

I  write  jestingly,  but  I  really  am  very  much  in  earnest. 
Come  and  have  a  talk  on  the  matter  as  soon  as  you  can,  for  I 
should  send  in  my  report.  You  will  find  me  in  Jermyn  Street, 
Tuesday,  Wednesday,  or  Thursday  mornings,  Thursday  after- 
noon, but  not  Tuesday  or  Wednesday  afternoon.  Send  a  line 
to  say  when  you  will  come. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley, 


CHAPTER   XX 
1866 

Besides  his  Fullerian  lectures  on  Ethnology  at  the 
Royal  Institution  this  year,  Huxley  published  in  February 
1866  a  paper  in  the  Natural  History  Review,  on  the  "  Pre- 
historic Remains  of  Caithness,"  based  upon  a  quantity  of 
remains  found  the  previous  autumn  at  Keiss.  This,  and 
the  article  on  the  "  Neanderthal  Skull "  in  the  Natural 
History  Review  for  1864,  attracted  some  notice  among  for- 
eign anthropologists.  Dr.  H.  Welcker  writes  about  them ; 
Dr.  A.  Ecker  wants  the  "  Prehistoric  Remains "  for  his 
new  Archiv  fUr  Anthropologie ;  the  Societe  d'Anthropologie 
de  Paris  elects  him  a  Foreign  Associate. 

He  was  asked  by  Dr.  Fayrer  to  assist  in  a  great  scheme 
he  had  proposed  to  the  Asiatic  Society,*  to  gather  men  of 
every  tribe  from  India,  the  Malayan  Peninsula,  Persia,  Ara- 
bia, the  Indian  Archipelago,  etc.,  for  anthropological  pur- 
poses. It  was  well  received  by  the  Council  of  the  Society 
and  by  the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Bengal ;  anything  Hux- 
ley could  say  in  its  favour  would  be  of  great  weight  Would 
he  come  out  as  Dr.  Fayrer's  guest  ? 

Unable  to  go  to  Calcutta,  he  sent  the  following  letter : — 

Jermyn  Street,  London,  Jum  14^  1866. 
My  dear  Fayrer — I  lose  no  time  in  replying  to  your  second 
letter,  and  my  first  business  is  to  apologise  for  not  having  an- 
swered the  first,  but  it  reached  me  in  the  thick  of  my  lectures, 
and  like  a  great  many  other  things  which  ought  to  have  been 
done  I  put  off  replying  to  a  more  convenient  season.     I  have 

*  Comp.  Chap.  XXII.  adinit  and  Appendix  I. 
294 


i866  GREAT  ANTHROPOLOGICAL  SCHEME  295 

been  terribly  hard  worked  this  year,  and  thought  I  was  going 
to  break  down  a  few  weeks  ago  but  luckily  I  have  pulled 
through. 

I  heartily  wish  that  there  were  the  smallest  chance  of  my 
being  able  to  accept  your  kind  invitation  and  take  part  in  your 
great  scheme  at  Calcutta.  But  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  leave 
England  for  more  than  six  weeks  or  two  months,  and  that  only 
in  the  autumn,  a  time  of  year  when  I  imagine  Calcutta  is  not 
likely  to  be  the  scene  of  anything  but  cholera  patients. 

As  to  your  plan  itself,  I  think  it  a  most  grand  and  useful  one 
if  it  can  be  properly  carried  out.  But  you  do  things  on  so  grand 
a  scale  in  India  that  I  suppose  all  the  practical  difficulties  which 
suggest  themselves  to  me  may  be  overcome. 

It  strikes  me  that  it  will  not  do  to  be  content  with  a  single 
representative  of  each  tribe.  At  least  four  or  five  will  be  needed 
to  eliminate  the  chances  of  accident,  and  even  then  much  will 
depend  upon  the  discretion  and  judgment  of  the  local  agent  who 
makes  the  suggestion.  This  difficulty,  however,  applies  chiefly  if 
not  solely  to  physical  ethnology.  To  the  philologer  the  oppor- 
tunities for  comparing  dialects  and  checking  pronunciation  will 
be  splendid,  however  [few]  the  individual  speakers  of  each  dia- 
lect may  be.  The  most  difficult  task  of  all  will  be  to  prevent  the 
assembled  Savans  from  massacring  the  "  specimens  "  at  the  end 
of  the  exhibition  for  the  sake  of  their  skulls  and  pelves ! 

I  am  really  afraid  that  my  own  virtue  might  yield  if  so 
tempted  I 

Jesting  apart,  I  heartily  wish  your  plans  success,  and  if  there 
are  any  more  definite  ways  in  which  I  can  help,  let  me  know, 
and  I  will  do  my  best.  You  will  want,  I  should  think,  a  physical 
and  a  philological  committee  to  organise  schemes :  ( i )  for  sys- 
tematic measuring,  weighing,  and  portraiture,  with  observation 
and  recording  of  all  physical  characters;  and  (2)  for  uniform 
registering  of  sounds  by  Roman  letters  and  collection  of  vocabu- 
laries and  grammatical  forms  upon  an  uniform  system. 

I  should  advise  you  to  look  into  the  Museum  of  the  Societe 
d' Anthropologic  of  Paris,  and  to  put  yourself  in  communication 
with  M.  Paul  Broca,  one  of  its  most  active  members,  who  has 
lately  been  organising  a  scheme  of  general  anthropological  in- 
structions. But  don't  have  anything  to  do  with  the  quacks  who 
are  at  the  head  of  the  "Anthropological  Society"  over  here. 
If  they  catch  scent  of  what  you  are  about  they  will  certainly 
want  to  hook  on  to  you. 

Once  more  I  wish  I  had  the  chance  of  being  able  to  visit 


296  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xx 

your  congress.  I  have  been  lecturing  on  Ethnology  this  year,* 
and  shall  be  again  this  year,  and  I  would  give  a  good  deal  to  be 
able  to  look  at  the  complex  facts  of  Indian  Ethnology  with  my 
own  eyes. 

But  as  the  sage  observed,  "  what's  impossible  can't  be,"  and 
what  with  short  holidays — 3,  wife  and  seven  children — ^and  miles 
of  work  in  arrear,  Inc^a  is  an  impossibility  for  me. 

You  say  nothing  about  yourself,  so  I  trust  you  are  well  and 
hearty,  and  all  your  belongings  flourishing. — Ever  yours  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  paleontology  he  published  this  year  papers  on  the 
"  Vertebrate  Remains  from  the  Jarrow  Colliery,  Kilkenny;" 
on  a  new  "  Telerpeton  from  Elgin,"  and  on  some  "  Dino- 
saurs from  South  Africa."  The  latter,  and  many  more  after- 
wards, were  sent  over  by  a  young  man  named  Alfred  Brown, 
who  had  a  curious  history.  A  Quaker  gentleman  came 
across  him  when  employed  in  cleaning  tools  in  Cirencester 
College,  found  that  he  was  a  good  Greek  and  Latin  scholar, 
and  got  him  a  tutorship  in  a  clergyman's  family  at  the  Cape. 
He  afterwards  entered  the  postal  service,  and  being  inspired 
with  a  vivid  interest  in  geology,  spent  all  the  leave  he  could 
obtain  from  his  office  on  the  Orange  River  in  getting  fossils 
from  the  Stormberg  Rocks.  These,  as  often  as  he  could 
aflFord  to  send  such  weighty  packages,  he  sent  to  Sir  R. 
Murchison,  to  whom  he  had  received  a  letter  of  introduction 
from  his  official  superior.  Sir  Roderick,  writing  to  Huxley, 
says  "  that  he  was  proud  of  his  new  recruit,"  to  whom  he 
sent  not  only  welcome  words  of  encouragement,  but  the  no 
less  welcome  news  that  the  brother  of  his  "  discoverer," 
hearing  of  the  facts  from  Professor  Woodward,  offered  to 
defray  his  expenses  so  that  he  could  collect  regularly. 

On  April  2  Huxley  was  in  Edinburgh  to  receive  the 
first  academic  distinction  conferred  upon  him  in  Britain. 
He  received  the  honorary  degree  of  the  University  in  com- 
pany with  Tyndall  and  Carlyle.  It  was  part  of  the  fitness  of 
things  that  he  should  be  associated  in  this  honour  with  his 
close  friend  Tyndall;  but  though  he  frequently  acknowl- 

*  As  Fullerian  Professor  at  the  Royal  Institution. 


i866  LETTER   TO  CHARLES   KINGSLEY 


297 


edged  his  debt  to  Carlyle  as  the  teacher  who  in  his  youth 
had  inspired  him  with  his  undying  hatred  of  shams  and 
humbugs  of  every  kind,  and  whom  he  had  gratefully  come 
to  know  in  after  days,  Carlyle  did  not  forgave  the  publica- 
tion of  Man's  Place  in  Nature,  Years  after,  near  the  end 
of  his  life,  my  fathei*  saw  him  walking  slowly  and  alone 
down  the  opposite  side  of  the  street,  and  touched  by  his 
solitary  appearance,  crossed  over  and  spoke  to  him.  The 
old  man  looked  at  him,  and  merely  remarking,  "  You're 
Huxley,  aren't  you  ?  the  man  that  says  we  are  all  descended 
from  monkeys,"  went  on  his  way. 

On  July  6  he  writes  to  tell  Darwin  that  he  has  lodged 
a  memorial  of  his  about  the  fossils  at  the  Gallegos  river, 
which  was  to  be  visited  by  the  Nassau  *  exploring  ship, 
with  the  hydrographer  direct,  instead  of  sending  it  in  to 
the  Lords  of  the  Admiralty,  who  would  only  have  sent  it 
on  to  the  hydrographer.  This  letter  he  heads  "  Country 
orders  executed  with  accuracy  and  despatch." 

The  following  letter  to  Charles  Kingsley  explains 
itself— 

Jermyn  Street,  Apri/  12,  1866. 

My  dear  Kingsley — I  shall  certainly  do  myself  the  pleasure 
of  listening  to  you  when  you  preach  at  the  Royal  Institution.  I 
wonder  if  you  are  going  to  take  the  line  of  showing  up  the  super- 
stitions of  men  of  science.  Their  name  is  legion,  and  the  exploit 
would  be  a  telling  one.  I  would  do  it  myself  only  I  think  I  am 
already  sufficiently  isolated  and  unpopular. 

However,  whatever  you  are  going  to  do  I  am  sure  you  will 
speak  honestly  and  well,  and  I  shall  come  and  be  assistant  bottle- 
holder. 

I  am  glad  you  like  the  working  men's  lectures.  I  suspect 
they  are  about  the  best  things  of  that  line  that  I  have  done,  and 
I  only  wish  I  had  had  the  sense  to  anticipate  the  run  they  have 
had  here  and  abroad,  and  I  would  have  revised  them  properly. 

As  they  stand  they  arc  terribly  in  the  rough,  from  a  literary 
point  of  view. 

No  doubt  crib-biting,  nurse-biting  and  original  sin  in  general 
are  all  strictly  reducible  from  Darwinian  principles;  but  don't 
by  misadventure  run  against  any  academical  facts. 

*  Chap.  XXH. 


298  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xx 

Some  whales  have  all  the  cerebral  vertebrae  free  now,  and 
every  one  of  them  has  the  full  number,  seven,  whether  they  are 
free  or  fixed.  No  doubt  whales  had  hind  legs  once  upon  a  time. 
If  when  you  come  up  to  town  you  go  to  the  College  of  Surgeons, 
my  friend  Flower  the  Conservator  (a  good  man  whom  you 
should  know),  will  show  you  the  whalebone  whale's  thigh  bones 
in  the  grand  skeleton  they  have  recently  set  up.  The  legs,  to  be 
sure,  and  the  feet  are  gone,  the  battle  of  life  having  left  private 
Cetacea  in  the  condition  of  a  Chelsea  pensioner. — Ever  yours 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

This  year  the  British  Association  met  at  Nottingham, 
and  Huxley  was  president  of  Section  D.  In  this  capacity 
he  invited  Professor  Haeckel  to  attend  the  meeting,  but  the 
impending  war  with  Austria  prevented  any  Prussian  from 
leaving  his  country  at  the  time,  though  Haeckel  managed  to 
come  over  later. 

Huxley  did  not  deliver  a  regular  opening  address  to  the 
section  on  the  Thursday,  but  on  the  Friday  made  a  speech, 
which  was  followed  by  a  discussion  upon  biology  and  its 
several  branches,  especially  morphology  and  its  relation  to 
physiology  ("  the  facts  concerning  form  are  questions  of 
force,  every  form  is  force  visible.")  He  lamented  that  the 
subdivisions  of  the  section  had  to  meet  separately  as  a  re- 
sult of  specialisation,  the  reason  for  which  he  found  in  the 
want  of  proper  scientific  education  in  schools.  And  this 
was  the  fault  of  the  universities,  for  just  as  in  the  story, 
"  Stick  won't  beat  dog,  dog  won't  bite  pig,  and  so  the  old 
woman  can't  get  home,"  science  would  not  be  taught  in 
the  schools  until  it  is  recognised  by  the  universities. 

This  prepared  the  way  for  Dean  Farrar's  paper  on 
science  teaching  in  the  public  schools.  His  experience  as  a 
master  at  Harrow  made  him  strongly  oppose  the  existing 
plan  of  teaching  all  boys  classical  composition  whether  they 
were  suited  for  it  or  no.  He  wished  to  exchange  a  great 
deal  of  Latin  verse-making  for  elementary  science. 

This  paper  was  doubly  interesting  to  Huxley,  as  coming 
from  a  classical  master  in  a  public  school,  and  he  remarked, 
"  He  felt  sure  that  at  the  present  time,  the  important  ques- 
tion for  England  was  not  the  duration  of  her  coal,  but  the 


i866  LETTER  TO  SPENCER  299 

due  comprehension  of  the  truths  of  science,  and  the  labours 
of  her  scientific  men." 

On  the  practical  side,  however,  Mr.  J.  Payne  said  the 
great  difficulty  was  the  want  of  teachers;  and  suggested 
that  if  men  of  science  were  really  in  earnest  they  would 
condescend  -to  teach  in  the  schools. 

It  was  to  a  certain  extent  in  answer  to  this  appeal  that 
Huxley  gave  his  lectures  on  Physiography  in  1869  (see 
p.  331),  and  instituted  the  course  of  training  for  science 
teachers  in  1871. 

He  concluded  his  work  at  Nottingham  by  a  lecture  to 
working  men. 

The  following  is  in  reply  to  Mr.  Spencer  who  had  ac- 
cused himself  of  losing  his  temper  in  an  argument — 

26  Abbey  Place,  Sunday^  Nov,  8,  1868. 

My  dear  Spencer — ^Your  conscience  has  been  treating  you 
with  the  most  extreme  and  unjust  severity. 

I  recollect  you  looked  rather  savage  at  one  point  in  our 
discussion,  but  I  do  assure  you  that  you  committed  no  overt 
act  of  ferocity ;  and  if  you  had,  I  think  I  should  have  fully  de- 
served it  for  joining  in  the  ferocious  onslaught  we  all  made 
upon  you. 

What  your  sins  may  be  in  this  line  to  other  folk  I  don't 
know,  but  so  far  as  I  am  concerned  I  assure  you  I  have  often 
said  that  I  know  no  one  who  takes  aggravated  opposition  better 
than  yourself,  and  that  I  have  not  a  few  times  been  ashamed  of 
the  extent  to  which  I  have  tried  your  patience. 

So  you  see  that  you  have,  what  the  Buddhists  call  a  stock  of 
accumulated  merit,  envers  moi — and  if  you  should  ever  feel 
inclined  to  "  d n  my  eyes  "  you  can  do  so  and  have  a  bal- 
ance left. 

Seriously,  my  old  friend,  you  must  not  think  it  necessary  to 
apologise    to    me    about    any    such    matters,    but    believe    me 

(d ned  or  und d) — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

26  Abbey  Place,  Nov.  ii,  1866. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  thank  you  for  the  new  edition  of  the 

Origin,  and  congratulate  you  on  having  done  with  it  for  a  while, 

so  as  to  be  able  to  go  on  to  that  book  of  a  portion  of  which  I  had 

a  glimpse  years  ago.    I  hear  good  accounts  of  your  health,  in- 


300 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xx 


deed  the  last  was  that  you  were  so  rampageous  you  meant  to 
come  to  London  and  have  a  spree  among  its  dissipations.  May 
that  be  true. 

I  am  in  the  thick  of  my  work,  and  have  only  had  time  to 
glance  at  your  Historical  Sketch, 

What  an  unmerciful  basting  you  give  "  our  mutual  friend." 
I  did  not  know  he  had  put  forward  any  claim  I  and  even  now 
that  I  read  it  black  and  white,  I  can  hardly  believe  it 

I  am  glad  to  hear  from  Spencer  that  you  are  on  the  right 
(that  is  my)  side  in  the  Jamaica  business.  But  it  is  wonderful 
how  people  who  commonly  act  together  are  divided  about  it 

My  wife  joins  with  me  in  kindest  wishes  to  Mrs.  Darwin  and 
yourself — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

You  will  receive  an  elementary  physiology  book,  not  for 
your  reading  but  for  Miss  Darwin's.  Were  you  not  charmed 
with  Haeckel? 

The  "  Jamaica  business  "  here  alluded  to  was  Governor 
Eyre's  suppression  of  a  negro  rising,  in  the  course  of  which 
he  had  executed,  under  martial  law,  a  coloured  leader  and 
member  of  the  Assembly,  named  Gordon.  The  question  of 
his  justification  in  so  doing  stirred  England  profoundly.  It 
became  the  touchstone  of  ultimate  political  convictions. 
Men  who  had  little  concern  for  ordinary  politics,  came  for- 
ward to  defend  a  great  constitutional  principle  which  they 
conceived  to  be  endangered.  A  committee  was  formed  to 
prosecute  Governor  Eyre  on  a  charge  of  murder,  in  order  to 
vindicate  the  right  of  a  prisoner  to  trial  by  due  process  of 
law.  Thereupon  a  counter-committee  was  organised  for  the 
defence  of  the  man  who,  like  Cromwell,  judged  that  the 
people  preferred  their  real  security  to  forms,  and  had  pre- 
sumably saved  the  white  population  of  Jamaica  by  striking 
promptly  at  the  focus  of  rebellion. 

The  Pall  Mall  Gazette  of  October  29,  1866,  made  a 
would-be  smart  allusion  to  the  part  taken  in  the  affair  by 
Huxley,  which  evoked,  in  reply,  a  calm  statement  of  his 
reasons  for  joining  the  prosecuting  committee : — 

It  is  amusing  (says  the  PaU  Mall)  to  see  how  the  rival  com- 
mittees, the  one  for  the  prosecution  and  the  other  for  the  defence 
of  Mr.  Eyre,  parade  the  names  of  distinguished  persons  who  are 


i866  THE  JAMAICA  COMMITTEE  301 

enrolled  as  subscribers  on  either  side.  Mill  is  set  against  Car- 
lyle,  and  to  counterbalance  the  adhesion  of  the  Laureate  to  the 
Defence  Fund,  the  Star  hastens  to  announce  that  Sir  Charles 
Lyell  and  Professor  Huxley  have  given  their  support  to  the 
Jamaica  Committee.  Everything,  of  course,  depends  on  the 
ground  on  which  the  subscriptions  are  given.  One  can  readily 
conceive  that  Mr.  Tennyson  has  been  chiefly  moved  by  a  gener- 
ous indignation  at  the  vindictive  behaviour  of  the  Jamaica  Com- 
mittee. It  would  be  curious  also  to  know  how  far  Sir  Charles 
Lyeirs  and  Mr.  Huxley's  peculiar  views  on  the  development  of 
species  have  influenced  them  in  bestowing  on  the  negro  that 
sympathetic  recognition  which  they  are  willing  to  extend  even 
to  the  ape  as  '"  a  man  and  a  brother." 

The  reply  appeared  in  the  Pall  Mall  of  October  31 : — 

Sir — I  learn  from  yesterday  evening's  Pall  Mall  Gazette  that 
you  are  curious  to  know  whether  certain  "  peculiar  views  on  the 
development  of  species,"  which  I  am  said  to  hold  in  the  excellent 
company  of  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  have  led  me  to  become  a  member 
of  the  Jamaica  Committee. 

Permit  me  without  delay  to  satisfy  a  curiosity  which  docs 
me  honour.  I  have  been  induced  to  join  that  committee  neither 
by  my  "  peculiar  views  on  the  development  of  species,"  nor  by 
any  particular  love  for,  or  admiration  of  the  negro— still  less  by 
any  miserable  desire  to  wreak  vengeance  for  recent  error  upon 
a  man  whose  early  career  I  have  often  admired;  but  because 
the  course  which  the  committee  proposes  to  take  appears  to  me 
to  be  the  only  one  by  which  a  question  of  the  profoundest  prac- 
tical importance  can  be  answered.  That  question  is,  Does  the 
killing  a  man  in  the  way  Mr.  Gordon  was  killed  constitute  mur- 
der in  the  eye  of  the  law,  or  does  it  not? 

You  perceive  that  this  question  is  wholly  independent  of 
two  others  which  are  persistently  confused  with  it,  namely — 
was  Mr.  Gordon  a  Jamaica  Hampden  or  was  he  a  psalm-sing- 
ing fire-brand?  and  was  Mr.  Eyre  actuated  by  the  highest  and 
noblest  motives,  or  was  he  under  the  influence  of  panic-stricken 
rashness  or  worse  impulses? 

I  do  not  presume  to  speak  with  authority  on  a  legal  question ; 
but,  unless  I  am  misinformed,  English  law  docs  not  permit  good 
persons,  as  such,  to  strangle  bad  persons,  as  such.  On  the  con- 
trary, I  understand  that,  if  the  most  virtuous  of  Britons,  let  his 
place  and  authority  be  what  they  may,  seize  and  hang  up  the 
greatest  scoundrel  in  Her  Majesty's  dominions  simply  because 


302  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xx 

he  is  an  evil  and  troublesome  person,  an  English  court  of  justice 
will  certainly  find  that  virtuous  person  guilty  of  murder.  Nor 
will  the  verdict  be  affected  by  any  evidence  that  the  defendant 
acted  from  the  best  of  motives,  and,  on  the  whole,  did  the  State 
a  service. 

Now,  it  may  be  that  Mr.  Eyre  was  actuated  by  the  best  of 
motives ;  it  tnay  be  that  Jamaica  is  all  the  better  for  being  rid  of 
Mr.  Gordon;  but  nevertheless  the  Royal  Commissioners,  who 
were  appointed  to  inquire  into  Mr.  Gordon's  case,  among  other 
matters,  have  declared  that: — 

The  evidence,  oral  and  documentary,  appears  to  us  to  be 
wholly  insufficient  to  establish  the  charge  upon  which  the  pris- 
oner took  his  trial.    (Report,  p.  37.) 

And  again  that  they 

Cannot  see  in  the  evidence  which  has  been  adduced,  any  suf- 
ficient proof,  either  of  his  (Mr.  Gordon's)  complicity  in  the  out- 
break at  Morant  Bay,  or  of  his  having  been  a  party  to  any 
general  conspiracy  against  the  Government    (Report,  p.  38.) 

Unless  the  Royal  Commissioners  have  greatly  erred,  there- 
fore, the  killing  of  Mr.  Gordon  can  only  be  defended  on  the 
ground  that  he  was  a  bad  and  troublesome  man;  in  short,  that 
although  he  might  not  be  guilty,  it  served  him  right. 

I  entertain  so  deeply-rooted  an  objection  to  this  method  of 
killing  people — the  act  itself  appears  to  me  to  be  so  frightful  a 
precedent,  that  I  desire  to  see  it  stigmatised  by  the  highest  au- 
thority as  a  crime.  And  I  have  joined  the  committee  which 
proposes  to  indict  Mr.  Eyre,  in  the  hope  that  I  may  hear  a 
court  of  justice  declare  that  the  only  defence  which  can  be  set 
up  (if  the  Royal  Commissioners  are  right)  is  no  defence,  and 
that  the  killing  of  Mr.  Gordon  was  the  greatest  offence  known 
to  the  law — ^murder. — I  remain.  Sir,  your  obedient  servant, 

Thomas  H.  Huxley. 
The  AxHENiEUM  Club,  Oct.  30,  1866. 

Two  letters  to  friends  who  had  taken  the  opposite  side 
in  this  burning  question  show  how  resolutely  he  set  himself 
against  permitting  a  difference  on  matters  of  principle  to 
affect  personal  relations  with  his  warmest  opponents. 

Jermyn  Street,  Nov,  8,  1866. 
My  dear  Kingsley — The  letter  of  which  you  have  heard, 
containing  my  reasons  for  becoming  a  member  of  the  Jamaica 


i866  THE  JAMAICA  COMMITTEE  303 

Committee  was  addressed  to  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  reply  to 
some  editorial  speculations  as  to  my  reasons  for  so  doing. 

I  forget  the  date  of  the  number  in  which  my  letter  appeared, 
but  I  will  find  it  out  and  send  you  a  copy  of  the  paper. 

Mr.  Eyre's  personality  in  this  matter  is  nothing  to  me;  I 
know  nothing  about  him,  and,  if  he  is  a  friend  of  yours,  I  am 
very  sorry  to  be  obliged  to  join  in  a  movement  which  must  be 
excessively  unpleasant  to  him. 

Furthermore,  when  the  verdict  of  the  jury  which  will  try 
him  is  once  given,  all  hostility  towards  him  on  my  part  will 
cease.  So  far  from  wishing  to  see  him  vindictively  punished, 
I  would  much  rather,  if  it  were  practicable,  indict  his  official 
hat  and  his  coat  than  himself. 

I  desire  to  see  Mr.  Eyre  indicted  and  a  verdict  of  guilty  in  a 
criminal  court  obtained,  because  I  have,  from  its  commencement, 
carefully  watched  the  Gordon  case ;  and  because  a  new  study  of 
all  the  evidence  which  has  now  been  collected  has  confirmed  my 
first  conviction  that  Gordon's  execution  was  as  bad  a  specimen 
as  we  have  had  since  Jeffries'  time  of  political  murder. 

Don't  suppose  that  I  have  any  particular  admiration  for 
Gordon.  He  belongs  to  a  sufficiently  poor  type  of  small  political 
agitator — and  very  likely  was  a  great  nuisance  to  the  Governor 
and  other  respectable  persons. 

But  that  is  no  reason  why  he  should  be  condemned,  by  an 
absurd  tribunal  and  with  a  brutal  mockery  of  the  forms  of  jus- 
tice, for  offences  with  which  impartial  judges,  after  a  full  in- 
vestigation, declare  there  is  no  evidence  to  show  that  he  was 
connected. 

Ex-Governor  Eyre  seized  the  man,  put  "him  in  the  hands  of 
the  preposterous  subalterns,  who  pretended  to  try  him — saw  the 
evidence  and  approved  of  the  sentence.  He  is  as  much  respon- 
sible for  Gordon's  death  as  if  he  had  shot  him  through  the  head 
with  his  own  hand.  I  daresay  he  did  all  this  with  the  best  of 
motives,  and  in  a  heroic  vein.  But  if  English  law  will  not 
declare  that  heroes  have  no  more  right  to  kill  people  in  this 
fashion  than  other  folk,  I  shall  take  an  early  opportunity  of 
migrating  to  Texas  or  some  other  quiet  place  where  there  is 
less  hero-worship  and  more  respect  for  justice,  which  is  to  my 
mind  of  much  more  importance  than  hero-worship. 

In  point  of  fact,  men  take  sides  on  this  question,  not  so 
much  by  looking  at  the  mere  facts  of  the  case,  but  rather  as 
their  deepest  political  convictions  lead  them.  And  the  great  use 
of  the  prosecution,  and  one  of  my  reasons  for  joining  it,  is  that 


304  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xx 

it  will  help  a  great  many  people  to  find  out  what  their  profound- 
est  political  beliefs  are. 

The  hero-worshippers  who  believe  that  the  world  is  to  be 
governed  by  its  great  men,  who  are  to  lead  the  little  ones,  justly 
if  they  can ;  but  if  not,  unjustly  drive  or  kick  them  the  right  way, 
will  sympathise  with  Mr.  Eyre. 

The  other  sect  (to  which  I  belong)  who  look  upon  hero- 
worship  as  no  better  than  any  other  idolatry,  and  upon  the 
attitude  of  mind  of  the  hero-worshipper  as  essentially  immoral ; 
who  think  it  is  better  for  a  man  to  go  wrong  in  freedom  than 
to  go  right  in  chains ;  who  look  upon  the  observance  of  inflexible 
justice  as  between  man  and  man  as  of  far  greater  importance 
than  even  the  preservation  of  social  order,  will  believe  that  Mr. 
Eyre  has  committed  one  of  the  greatest  crimes  of  which  a 
person  in  authority  can  be  guilty,  and  will  strain  every  nerve  to 
obtain  a  declaration  that  their  belief  is  in  accordance  with  the 
law  of  England.  * 

People  who  differ  on  fundamentals  are  not  likely  to  convert 
one  another.  To  you,  as  to  my  dear  friend  Tyndall,  with  whom 
I  almost  always  act,  but  who  in  this  matter  is  as  much  opposed 
to  me  as  you  are,  I  can  only  say,  let  us  be  strong  enough  and 
wise  enough  to  fight  the  question  out  as  a  matter  of  principle 
and  without  bitterness. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

November  9,  1866. 

My  dear  Tyndall — Many  thanks  for  the  kind  note  which 
accompanied  your  letter  to  the  Jamaica  Committee. 

When  I  presented  myself  at  Rogers'  dinner  last  night  I  had 
not  heard  of  the  latter,  and  Gassiot  began  poking  fun  at  me,  and 
declaring  that  your  absence  was  due  to  a  quarrel  between  us  on 
this  unhappy  subject 

I  replied  to  the  jest  earnestly  enough,  that  I  hoped  and 
believed  our  old  friendship  was  strong  enough  to  stand  any 
strain  that  might  be  put  on  it,  much  as  I  grieved  that  we  should 
be  ranged  in  opposite  camps  in  this  or  any  other  cause. 

That  you  and  I  have  fundamentally  different  political  prin- 
ciples must,  I  think,  have  become  obvious  to  both  of  us  during 
the  progress  of  the  American  War.  The  fact  is  made  still  more 
plain  by  your  printed  letter,  the  tone  and  spirit  of  which  I 
greatly  admired  without  being  able  to  recognise  in  it  any  im- 
portant fact  or  argument  which  had  not  passed  through  my 
mind  before  I  joined  the  Jamaica  Committee. 


i866         LESSONS  ON  ELEMENTARY  PHYSIOLOGY 


305 


Thus  there  is  nothing  for  it  but  for  us  to  agree  to  differ, 
each  supporting  his  own  side  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  and 
respecting  his  friend's  freedom  as  he  would  his  own,  and  doing 
his  best  to  remove  all  petty  bitterness  from  that  which  is  at 
bottom  one  of  the  most  important  constitutional  battles  in  which 
Englishmen  have  for  many  years  been  engaged. 

If  you  and  I  are  istrong  enough  and  wise  enough,  we  shall 
be  able  to  do  this,  and  yet  preserve  that  love  for  one  another 
which  I  value  as  one  of  the  good  things  of  my  life. 

If  not,  we  shall  come  to  grief.  I  mean  to  do  my  best — 
Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Huxley  was  always  of  opinion  that  to  write  a  good 
elementary  text-book  required  a  most  extensive  and  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  the  subject  under  discussion.  Certainly 
the  Lessons  on  Elementary  Physiology  which  appeared  at  the 
end  of  1866  were  the  outcome  of  such  knowledge,  and  met 
with  a  wonderful  and  lasting  success  as  a  text-book.  A 
graceful  compliment  was  passed  upon  it  by  Sir  William 
Lawrence,  when,  in  thanking  the  author  for  the  gift  of  the 
book,  he  wrote  (January  24,  1867),  "  in  your  modest  book 
*  indocti  discant,  ament  meminisse  periti ! '  " 

This  was  before  the  days  of  American  copyright,  and 
English  books  were  usually  regarded  as  fair  prey  by  the 
mass  of  American  publishers.  Among  the  exceptions  to 
this  practical  rule  were  the  firm  of  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  who 
made  it  a  point  of  honour  to  treat  foreign  authors  as  though 
they  were  legally  entitled  to  some  equitable  rights.  On  their 
behalf  an  arrangement  was  made  for  an  authorised  Ameri- 
can edition  of  the  Physiology  by  Dr.  Youmans,  whose 
acquaintance  thus  made  my  father  did  not  allow  to  drop. 

It  is  worth  noting  that  by  the  year  1898  this  little  book 
had  passed  through  four  editions,  and  been  reprinted  thirty- 
one  times. 


CHAPTER   XXI 

1867 

It  has  already  been  noted  that  Huxley's  ethnological 
work  continued  t4iis  year  with  a  second  series  of  lectures 
at  the  Royal  Institution,  while  he  enlarged  his  paper  on 
"Two  widely  contrasted  forms  of  Human  Crania,"  and 
published  it  in  the  Journal  of  Anatomy.  One  paleontological 
memoir  of  his  appeared  this  year  on  Acanthopholis,  a  fossil 
from  the  chalk  marl,  an  additional  piece  of  work  for  which 
he  excuses  himself  to  Sir  C.  Lyell  (January  4,  1867) : — 

The  new  reptile  advertised  in  GeoL  Mag.  has  turned  up  in 
the  way  of  business,  and  I  could  not  help  giving  a  notice  of  it, 
or  I  should  not  have  undertaken  anything  fresh  just  now. 

The  Spitzbergen  things  are  very  different,  and  I  have  taken 
sundry  looks  at  them  and  put  them  by  again  to  let  my  thoughts 
ripen. 

They  are  Ichthyosaurian,  and  I  am  not  sure  they  do  not 
belong  to  two  species.  But  it  is  an  awful  business  to  compare 
all  the  Ichthyosaurians.  I  think  that  one  form  is  new.  Please 
to  tell  Nordenskiold  this  much. 

However,  his  chief  interest  was  in  the  anatomy  of  birds, 
at  which  he  had  been  working  for  some  time,  and  especially 
the  development  of  certain  of  the  cranial  bones  as  a  basis 
of  classification.  On  April  11,  expanding  one  of  his  Hun- 
terian  Lectures,  he  read  a  paper  on  this  subject  at  the 
Zoological  Society,  afterwards  published  in  their  Proceed- 
ings for  1867. 

As  he  had  found  the  works  of  Professor  Cornay  of  help 
in  the  preparation  of  this  paper,  he  was  careful  to  send  him 
a  copy  with  an  acknowledgment  of  his  indebtedness,  elicit- 
306 


i867  LETTER   TO   PARKER  307 

ing  the  reply,  "  c'cst  si  bean  de  trouver  chcz  rhomnie  la  science 
unie  d  la  justice.'* 

He  followed  this  up  with  another  paper  on  "  The  Classi- 
fication and  Distribution  of  the  Alectoromorphae  and  Hete- 
romorphae  "  in  1868,  and  to  the  work  upon  this  the  fol- 
lowing letter  to  his  ally,  W.  K.  Parker,  refers : — 

Royal  Geolog.  Survey  of  Gt.  Britain, 
Jermyn  Street, /«/k  17,  1867. 

My  dear  Parker — Nothing  short  of  the  direct  temptation  of 
the  evil  one  could  lead  you  to  entertain  so  monstrous  a  doctrine, 
as  that  you  propound  about  Cariamidae, 

I  recommend  fasting  for  three  days  and  the  application  of  a 
scourge  thrice  in  the  twenty-four  hours  I  Do  this,  and  about  the 
fourth  day  you  will  perceive  that  the  cranial  differences  alone 
are  as  great  as  those  between  Cathartes  and  Serpentarius, 

If  you  want  to  hear  something  new  and  true  it  is  this : — 

1.  That  Memora  is  more  unlike  all  the  other  Passerines  {i.e, 
Coracomorphae)  than  they  are  unlike  one  another,  and  that  it 
will  have  to  stand  in  a  group  by  itself. 

It  is  as  much  like  a  wren  as  you  are — less  so,  in  fact,  if  you 
go  on  maintaining  that  preposterous  fiction  about  Serpentarius. 

2.  Wood-peckers  are  more  like  crows  than  they  are  like 
cuckoos. 

Aegithognathae 

Coracomorphae 
Cypselomorphae  G^cinomorphae 

\^       Desmognathae 

xloccygomorphae./ 

3.  Sundevell  is  the  sharpest  fellow  who  has  written  on  the 
classification  of  birds. 

4.  Nitzsch  and  W.  K.  Parker  *  are  the  sharpest  fellows  who 
have  written  on  their  osteology. 

5.  Though  I  do  not  see  how  it  follows  naturally  on  the  above, 
still,  where  can  I  see  a  good  skeleton  of  Glareola  ? 

None  in  college,  B.M.S.  badly  prepared. — Ever  yours  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

♦  Except  in  the  case  of  Serpenurius. 


3o8  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxi 

An  incident  which  diversified  one  of  the  Gilchrist  lec- 
tures to  working  men  is  thus  recorded  by  the  Times  of 
January  23,  1867 : — 

A  GOOD  EXAMPLE.  Last  night,  at  the  termination  of  a 
lecture  on  ethnology,  delivered  by  Professor  Huxley  to  an  audi- 
ence which  filled  the  theatre  of  the  London  Mechanics'  Institute 
in  Southampton  Buildings,  Chancery  Lane,  the  lecturer  said 
that  he  had  received  a  letter  as  he  entered  the  building  which  he 
would  not  take  the  responsibility  of  declining  to  read,  although 
it  had  no  reference  to  the  subject  under  consideration.  He  then 
read  the  letter,  which  was  simply  signed  **  A  Regular  Attendant 
at  Your  Lectures,"  and  which  in  a  few  words  drew  attention 
to  the  appalling  distress  existing  among  the  population  out  of 
work  at  Uie  East  End,  and  suggested  that  all  those  present  at 
the  lecture  that  night  should  be  allowed  the  opportunity  of  con- 
tributing id.  or  2d.  each  towards  a  fund  for  their  relief,  and  that 
the  professor  should  become  the  treasurer  for  the  evening.  This 
suggestion  was  received  by  the  audience  with  marks  of  approval. 
The  professor  said  he  would  not  put  pressure  on  anyone;  he 
would  simply  place  his  own  subscription  in  one  of  the  skulls  on 
the  table.  This  he  did,  and  all  the  audience  coming  on  the  plat- 
form, threw  in  money  in  copper  and  silver  until  the  novel  cash 
box  was  filled  with  coin  which  amounted  to  a  large  sum.  A 
gentleman  present  expressed  a  hope  that  the  example  set  by 
that  audience  might  be  followed  with  good  results  wherever 
large  bodies  assembled  either  for  educational  or  recreative 
purposes. 

At  the  end  of  April  this  year  my  father  spent  a  week  in 
Brittany  with  Dr.  Hooker  and  Sir  J.  Lubbock,  rambling 
about  the  neighbourhood  of  Rennes  and  Vannes,  and  com- 
bining the  examination  of  prehistoric  remains  with  the  re- 
freshment of  holiday  making. 

Few  letters  of  this  period  exist.  The  x  Club  was  doing 
its  work.  Most  of  those  to  whom  he  would  naturally  have 
written  he  met  constantly.  Two  letters  to  Professor 
Haeckel  give  pieces  of  his  experience.  One  suggests  the 
limits  of  aggressive  polemics,  as  to  which  I  remember  his 
once  saying  that  he  himself  had  only  twice  been  the  ag- 
gressor in  controversy,  without  waiting  to  be  personally 
attacked;  once  where  he  found  his  opponent  was  engaged 


i867  LETTER   TO   HAECKEL  309 

in  a  flanking  movement;  the  other  when  a  man  of  g^eat 
public  reputation  had  come  forward  to  champion  an  un- 
tenable position  of  the  older  orthodoxy,  and  a  blow  dealt 
to  his  pretensions  to  historical  and  scientific  accuracy  would 
not  only  bring  the  question  home  to  many  who  neglected 
it  in  an  impersonal  form,  but  would  also  react  upon  the 
value  of  the  historical  arguments  with  which  he  sought  to 
stir  public  opinion  in  other  spheres.  The  other  letter 
touches  on  the  influence,  at  once  calming  and  invigorating, 
as  he  had  known  it  to  the  full  for  the  last  twelve  years, 
which  a  wife  can  bring  in  the  midst  of  outward  struggles 
to  the  inner  life  of  the  home. 

Jermyn  Street,  London,  May  20,  1867. 

My  dear  Haeckel — Your  letter,  though  dated  the  12th,  has 
but  just  reached  me.  I  mention  this  lest  you  should  think  me 
remiss,  my  sin  in  not  writing  to  you  already  being  sufficiently 
great  But  your  book  did  not  reach  me  until  November,  and  I 
have  been  hard  at  work  lecturing,  with  scarcely  an  intermission 
ever  since. 

Now  I  need  hardly  say  that  the  Morphologie  is  not  exactly 
a  novel  to  be  taken  up  and  read  in  the  intervals  of  business.  On 
the  contrary,  though  profoundly  interesting,  it  is  an  uncom- 
monly hard  book,  and  one  wants  to  read  every  sentence  of 
it  over. 

I  went  through  it  within  a  fortnight  of  its  coming  into  my 
hands,  so  as  to  get  at  your  general  drift  and  purpose,  but  up 
to  this  time  I  have  not  been  able  to  read  it  as  I  feel  I  ought  to 
read  it  before  venturing  upon  criticism.  You  cannot  imagine 
how  my  time  is  frittered  away  in  these  accursed  lectures  and 
examinations. 

There  can  be  but  one  opinion,  however,  as  to  the  knowledge 
and  intellectual  grasp  displayed  in  the  book;  and,  to  me,  the 
attempt  to  systematise  biology  as  a  whole  is  especially  interest- 
ing and  valuable. 

I  shall  go  over  this  part  of  your  work  with  great  care  by 
and  by,  but  I  am  afraid  you  must  expect  that  the  number  of 
biologists  who  will  do  so,  will  remain  exceedingly  small.  Our 
comrades  are  not  strong  in  logic  and  philosophy. 

With  respect  to  the  polemic  excursus,  of  course,  I  chuckle 
over  them  most  sympathetically,  and  then  say  how  naughty  they 
are!     I  have  done  too  much  of  the  same  sort  of  thing  not  to 


3IO  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxi 

sympathise  entirely  with  you;  and  I  am  much  inclined  to  think 
that  it  is  a  good  Uiing  for  a  man,  once  at  any  rate  in  his  life, 
to  perform  a  public  war-dance  against  all  sorts  of  humbug  and 
imposture. 

But  having  satisfied  one's  love  of  freedom  in  this  way,  per- 
haps the  sooner  the  war-paint  is  off  the  better.  It  has  no  virtue 
except  as  a  sig^  of  one's  own  frame  of  mind  and  determina- 
tion, and  when  that  is  once  known,  is  little  better  than  a  dis- 
traction. 

I  think  there  are  a  few  patches  of  this  kind,  my  dear  friend, 
which  may  as  well  come  out  in  the  next  edition,  e.g,  that  wonder- 
ful note  about  the  relation  of  God  to  gas,  the  gravity  of  which 
greatly  tickled  my  fancy. 

I  pictured  to  myself  the  effect  which  a  translation  of  this 
would  have  upon  the  minds  of  my  respectable  countrymen  I 

Apropos  of  translation.  Darwin  wrote  to  me  on  that  sub- 
ject, and  with  his  usual  generosity,  would  have  made  a  consider- 
able contribution  towards  the  expense  if  we  could  have  seen 
our  way  to  the  publication  of  a  translation.  But  I  do  not  think 
it  would  be  well  to  translate  the  book  in  fragments,  and,  as  a 
whole,  it  would  be  a  very  costly  undertaking,  with  very  little 
chance  of  finding  readers. 

I  do  not  believe  that  in  the  British  Islands  there  are  fifty 
people  who  are  competent  to  read  the  book,  and  of  the  fifty,  five 
and  twenty  have  read  it  or  will  read  it  in  German. 

What  I  desire  to  do  is  to  write  a  review  of  it,  which  will 
bring  it  into  some  notice  on  this  side  of  the  water,  and  this  I 
hope  to  do  before  long.  If  I  do  not  it  will  be,  you  well  know, 
from  no  want  of  inclination,  but  simply  from  lack  of  time. 

In  any  case,  as  soon  as  I  have  been  able  to  study  the  book 
carefully,  you  shall  have  my  honest  opinion  about  all  points. 

I  am  glad  your  journey  has  yielded  so  good  a  scientific 
harvest,  and  especially  that  you  found  my  Oceanic  Hydrozoa  of 
some  use.  But  I  am  shocked  to  find  you  had  no  copy  of  the 
book  of  your  own,  and  I  shall  take  care  that  one  is  sent  to 
you.  It  is  my  first-bom  work,  done  when  I  was  very  raw  and 
inexperienced,  and  had  neither  friends  nor  help.  Perhaps  I  am 
all  the  fonder  of  the  child  on  that  ground. 

A  lively  memory  of  you  remains  in  my  house,  and  wife  and 
children  will  be  very  glad  to  hear  that  I  have  news  of  you  when 
I  go  home  to  dinner. 

Keep  us  in  kindly  recollection,  and  believe  me — Ever  yours 
very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 


1867  LETTER  TO   HAECKEL  311 

July  16,  1867. 

My  dear  Haeckel  —  My  wife  and  I  send  you  our  most 
hearty  congratulations  and  good  wishes.  Give  your  betrothed 
a  good  account  of  us,  for  we  hope  in  the  future  to  entertain  as 
warm  a  friendship  for  her  as  for  you.  I  was  very  glad  to  have 
the  news,  for  it  seemed  to  me  very  sad  that  a  man  of  your  warm 
affections  should  be  surrounded  only  by  hopeless  regrets.  Such 
Surroundings  inflict  a  sort  of  partial  paralysis  upon  one's  whole 
nature,  a  result  which  is,  to  me,  far  more  serious  and  regrettable 
than  the  mere  suffering  one  undergoes. 

The  one  thing  for  men,  who  like  you  and  I  stand  pretty  much 
alone,  and  have  a  good  deal  of  fighting  to  do  in  the  external 
world,  is  to  have  light  and  warmth  and  confidence  within  the 
four  walls  of  home.    May  all  these  good  things  await  you  I 

Many  thanks  for  your  kind  invitation  to  Jena.  I  am  sure 
my  wife  would  be  as  much  pleased  as  I  to  accept  it,  but  it  is 
very  difficult  for  her  to  leave  her  children. 

We  will  keep  it  before  us  as  a  pleasant  possibility,  but  I 
suspect  you  and  Madame  will  be  able  to  come  to  England  before 
we  shall  reach  Germany. 

I  wish  I  had  rooms  to  offer  you,  but  you  have  seen  that  troop 
of  children,  and  they  leave  no  comer  unoccupied. 

Many  thanks  for  the  Bericht  and  the  genealogical  tables. 
You  seem,  as  usual,  to  have  got  through  an  immense  amount  of 
work. 

I  have  been  exceedingly  occupied  with  a  paper  on  the 
"  Qassification  of  Birds,"  a  sort  of  expansion  of  one  of  my 
Hunterian  Lectures  this  year.  It  has  now  gone  to  press,  and 
I  hope  soon  to  be  able  to  send  you  a  copy  of  it. 

Occupation  of  this  and  other  kinds  must  be  my  excuse  for 
having  allowed  so  much  longer  a  time  to  slip  by  than  I  imagined 
had  done  before  writing  to  you.  It  is  not  for  want  of  S3mi- 
pathy,  be  sure,  for  my  wife  and  I  have  often  talked  of  the  new 
life  opening  out  to  you. 

This  is  written  in  my  best  hand.  I  am  proud  of  it,  as  I  can 
read  every  word  quite  easily  myself,  which  is  more  than  I  can 
always  say  for  my  own  MS. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  same  experience  is  attested  and  enforced  in  the 
correspondence  with  Dr.  Anton  Dohm,  which  begins  this 
year.  Genial,  enthusiastic,  as  pungent  as  he  was  eager  in 
conversation,  the  future  founder  of  the  Marine  Biological 

31 


312 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxi 


Station  at  Naples,  on  his  first  visit  to  England,  made  my 
father's  acquaintance  by  accepting  his  invitation  to  stay  with 
him  '*  for  as  long  as  you  can  make  it  convenient  to  stay  " 
at  Swanage,  "  a  little  country  town  with  no  sort  of  amuse- 
ment except  what  is  to  be  got  by  walking  about  a  rather 
pretty  country.  But  having  warned  you  of  this,  I  repeat 
that  it  will  give  me  much  pleasure  to  see  you  if  you  think* 
it  worth  while  to  come  so  far." 

Dr.  Dohm  came,  and  came  into  the  midst  of  the  family 
— ^seven  children,  ranging  from  ten  years  to  babyhood,  with 
whom  he  made  himself  as  popular  by  his  farmyard  reper- 
tory, as  he  did  with  the  elders  by  other  qualities.  The  im- 
pression left  upon  him  appears  from  a  letter  written  soon 
after — 

"Ich  habe  heute  mehrere  Capitel  in  Mill's  Utilitarianism 
gelesen  and  das  Wort  happiness  mehr  als  einmal  gefunden: 
hatte  ich  eine  Definition  dieses  vielumworbenen  Wortes  irgend 
Jemand  zu  geben,  ich  wiirde  sagen :  ♦  go  and  see  the  Huxley 
family  at  Swanage ;  and  if  you  would  enjoy  the  same  I  enjoyed, 
you  would  feel  what  is  happiness,  and  never  more  ask  for  a 
definition  of  this  sentiment." 

Swanage,  Sgpt.  22,  1867. 

My  dear  Dohrn — Thanks  to  my  acquaintance  with  the 
Mikroskopische  Anatomie,  and  to  the  fact  that  you  employ  our 
manuscript  characters,  and  not  the  hieroglyphics  of  what  I  ven- 
ture to  call  the  "  cursed  "  and  not  "  cursiv  "  Schrift,  your  letter 
was  as  easy  as  it  was  pleasant  to  read.  We  are  all  glad  to  have 
news  of  you,  though  it  was  really  very  unnecessary  to  thank 
us  for  trying  to  make  your  brief  visit  a  pleasant  one.  Your 
conscience  must  be  more  "  pungent "  than  your  talk,  if  it  pricks 
you  with  so  little  cause.  My  wife  rejoices  saucily  to  find  that  • 
phrase  of  hers  has  stuck  so  strongly  in  your  mind,  but  you  must 
remember  her  fondness  for  **  Tusch." 

You  must  certainly  marry.  In  my  bachelor  days,  it  was 
unsafe  for  anyone  to  approadi  me  before  mid-day,  and  for  all 
intellectual  purposes  I  was  barren  till  the  evening.  Breakfast 
at  six  would  have  upset  me  for  the  day.  You  and  the  lobster 
noted  the  difference  the  other  day. 

*  I  have  been  reading  several  chapters  of  Mill's  Utilitarianism 
to-day,  and  met  with  the  word  **  happiness**  more  than  once  ;  if  /had 
to  give  anybody  a  definition  of  this  much  debated  word,  I  should  say — 


1867  INFLUENCE  OF   MARRIAGE  313 

Whether  it  is  matrimony  or  whether  it  is  middle  age  I  don't 
know,  but  as  time  goes  on  you  can  combine  both. 

I  cannot  but  accept  your  kind  offer  to  send  me  Fanny 
Lewald's  works,  though  it  is  a  shame  to  rob  you  of  them.  In 
return  my  wife  insists  on  your  studying  a  copy  of  Tennyson, 
which  we  shall  send  you  as  soon  as  we  return  to  civilisation, 
which  will  be  next  Friday.  If  you  are  in  London  after  that  date 
we  shall  hope  to  see  you  once  more  before  you  return  to  the 
bosom  of  the  "  Fatherland." 

I  did  my  best  to  give  the  children  your  message,  but  I  fear  I 
failed  ignominiously  in  giving  the  proper  bovine  vocalisation  to 
"  Mroo." 

That  small  curly-headed  boy  Harry,  struck,  I  suppose  by  the 
kindness  you  both  show  to  children,  has  effected  a  synthesis 
between  you  and  Tyndall,  and  gravely  observed  the  other  day, 
"  Doctor  Dohm-Tyndall  do  say  Mroo." 

My  wife  .  .  .  sends  her  kind  regards.  The  "  seven  "  are  not 
here  or  they  would  vote  love  by  acclamation. — Ever  yours  very 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

He  did  not  this  year  attend  the  British  Association, 
which  was  held  in  Dundee.  This  was  the  first  occasion  on 
which  an  evening  was  devoted  to  a  working  men's  lecture, 
a  step  important  as  tending  towards  his  own  ideal  of  what 
science  should  be: — not  the  province  of  the  few,  but  the 
possession  of  the  many. 

This  first  lecture  was  delivered  by  Professor  Tyndall, 
who  wrote  him  an  account  of  the  meeting,  and  in  particular 
of  his  reconciliation  with  Professors  Thomson  (Lord  Kel- 
vin) and  Tait,  with  whom  he  had  had  a  somewhat  embit- 
tered controversy. 

In  his  reply,  Huxley  writes : — 

To  J.  Tyndall 

Thanks  also  for  a  copy  of  the  Dundee  Advertiser  containing 
your  lecture.  It  seemed  to  me  that  the  report  must  be  a  very 
good  one,  and  the  lecture  reads  exceedingly  well.  You  have 
inaugurated  the  working  men's  lectures  of  the  Association  in  a 
way  that  cannot  be  improved.  And  it  was  worth  the  trouble, 
for  I  suspect  they  will  become  a  great  and  noble  feature  in  the 
meetings. 


314 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxi 


Everything  seems  to  have  gone  well  at  the  meeting,  the  edu- 
cational business  carried  [i.e.  a  recommendation  that  natural 
science  be  made  a  part  of  the  curriculum  in  the  public  schools], 
and  the  anthropologers  making  fools  of  themselves  in  a  most 
effectual  way.  So  that  I  do  not  feel  I  have  .anything  to  reproach 
myself  with  for  being  absent. 

I  am  very  pleased  to  hear  of  the  reconciliation  with  Thom- 
son and  Tait.  The  mode  of  it  speaks  well  for  them,  and  the  fact 
will  remove  a  certain  source  of  friction  from  amongst  the  cogs 
of  your  mental  machinery. 

The  following  gives  the  reason  for  his  resigning  the 
Fullerian  lectureship: — 

ATHENiCUM  Club,  May,  1867. 

My  dear  Tyndall — A  conversation  I  had  with  Bence  Jones 
yesterday  reminded  me  that  I  ought  to  have  communicated  with 
you.  But  we  do  not  meet  so  often  as  we  used  to  do,  being,  I  sup- 
pose, both  very  busy,  and  I  forget  to  write. 

You  recollect  that  the  last  time  we  talked  together,  you 
mentioned  a  notion  of  Bence  Jones's  to  make  the  Fulle- 
rian Professorship  of  Physiology  a  practically  permanent  ap- 
pointment, and  that  I  was  quite  inclined  to  stick  by  that  (if 
such  arrangement  could  be  carried  out),  and  give  up  other 
things. 

But  since  I  have  been  engaged  in  the  present  course  of 
lectures  I  have  found  reason  to.  change  my  views.  It  is  very 
hard  work,  and  takes  up  every  atom  of  my  time  to  make  the 
lectures  what  they  should  be ;  and  I  find  that  at  this  time  of  year, 
being  more  or  less  used  up,  I  suppose,  with  the  winter  work,  I 
stand  the  worry  and  excitement  of  the  actual  lectures  very 
badly.  Add  to  this  that  it  is  six  weeks  clean  gone  out  of  the 
only  time  I  have  disposable  for  real  scientific  progress,  and  you 
will  understand  how  it  is  that  I  have  made  up  my  mind  to 
resign. 

I  put  all  this  clearly  before  Bence  Jones  yesterday,  with  the 
proviso  that  I  could  and  would  do  nothing  that  should  embarrass 
the  Institution  or  himself. 

If  there  is  the  least  difficulty  in  supplying  my  place,  or  if  the 
^managers  think  I  shall  deal  shadily  with  them  by  resigning 
before  the  expiration  of  my  term,  of  course  I  go  on.  And  I 
hope  you  all  understand  that  I  would  do  anything  rather  than 
put  even  the  appearance  of  a  slight  upon  those  who  were  kind 
enough  to  elect  me.— Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 


1867  FULLERIAN   LECTURESHIP  315 

He  found  a  substitute  for  1868,  the  last  year  of  the 
triennial  course,  in  Dr.  (now  Sir)  Michael  Foster.  Of  his 
final  lectures  in  1867  he  used  to  tell  a  story  against  him- 
self. 

In  my  early  period  as  a  lecturer,  I  had  very  little  confidence 
in  my  general  powers,  but  one  thing  I  prided  myself  upon  was 
clearness.  I  was  once  talking  of  the  brain  before  a  large  mixed 
audience,  and  soon  began  to  feel  that  no  one  in  the  room  under- 
stood me.  Finally  I  saw  the  thoroughly  interested  face  of  a 
woman  auditor,  and  took  consolation  in  delivering  the  remainder 
of  the  lecture  directly  to  her.  At  the  close,  my  feeling  as  to  her 
interest  was  confirmed  when  she  came  up  and  asked  if  she  might 
put  one  question  upon  a  single  point  which  she  had  not  quite 
understood.  "  Certainly,"  I  replied.  "  Now,  Professor,"  she 
said,  "  is  the  cerebellum  inside  or  outside  the  skull  ?  "  (Remi- 
niscences of  T.  H.  Huxley,  by  Professor  H.  Fairfield  Osborn). 

Dr.  Foster  used  to  add  maliciously,  that  disgust  at  the 
small  impression  he  seemed  to  have  made  was  the  true 
reason  for  the  transference  of  the  lectures. 


CHAPTER   XXII 
1868 

In  1868  he  published  five  scientific  memoirs,  amongst 
them  his  classification  of  birds  and  "  Remarks  upon  Archae- 
opteryx  Lithographica  "  (Proc.  Roy.  Soc.  xvi.  1868,  pp.  243- 
248).  This  creature,  a  bird  with  reptilian  characters,  was  a 
suggestive  object  from  which  to  popularise  some  of  the  far- 
reaching  results  of  his  many  years'  labour  upon  the  mor- 
phology of  both  birds  and  reptiles.  Thus  it  led  to  a  lecture 
at  the  Royal  Institution,  on  February  7,  "  On  the  Animals 
which  are  most  nearly  intermediate  between  Birds  and 
Reptiles." 

Of  this  branch  of  work  Sir  M.  Foster  says :  (Obit.  Not. 
Proc.  Roy.  Soc.  vol.  lix.) : — 

One  great  consequence  of  these  researches  was  that  science 
was  enriched  by  a  clear  demonstration  of  the  many  and  close 
affinities  between  reptiles  and  birds,  so  that  the  two  hence- 
forward came  to  be  known  under  the  joint  title  of  Sauropsida, 
the  amphibia  being  at  the  same  time  distinctly  more  separated 
from  the  reptiles,  and  their  relations  to  fishes  more  clearly  signi- 
fied by  the  joint  title  of  Ichthyopsida.  At  the  same  time,  proof 
was  brought  forward  that  the  line  of  descent  of  the  Sauropsida 
clearly  diverged  from  that  of  the  Mammalia,  both  starting  from 
some  common  ancestry.  And  besides  this  great  generalisation, 
the  importance  of  which,  both  from  a  classificatory  and  from  an 
evolutional  point  of  view,  needs  no  comment,  there  came  out 
of  the  same  researches  numerous  lesser  contributions  to  the 
advancement  of  morphological  knowledge,  including  among 
others  an  attempt,  in  many  respects  successful,  at  a  classification 
of  birds. 

This  work  in  connection  with  the  reptilian  ancestry  of 
birds  further  appears  in  the  paleontological  papers  published 
316 


1 868  BATHYBIUS 


317 


in  1869  upon  the  Dinosaurs  (see  Chap.  XXIIL),  and  is 
referred  to  in  a  letter  to  Haeckel,  p.  325. 

His  Hunterian  lectures  on  the  Invertebrata  appeared 
this  year  in  the  Quarterly  Journal  of  Microscopical  Science 
(pp.  126-129,  and  191-201),  and  in  the  October  number 
of  the  same  journal  appeared  his  famous  article  "  On  some 
Organisms  living  at  great  depth  in  the  North  Atlantic 
Ocean/'  originally  delivered  before  the  British  Association 
at  Norwich  in  this  year  (1868).  The  sticky  or  viscid  char- 
acter of  the  fresh  mud  from  the  bottom  of  the  Atlantic  had 
already  been  noticed  by  Captain  Dayman  when  making 
soundings  for  the  Atlantic  cable.  This  stickiness  was  appar- 
ently due  to  the  presence  of  innumerable  lumps  of  a  trans- 
parent, gelatinous  substance,  consisting  of  minute  granules 
without  discoverable  nucleus  or  membranous  envelope, 
and  interspersed  with  cretaceous  coccoliths.  After  a  de- 
scription of  the  structure  of  this  substance  and  its  chemical 
reactions,  he  makes  a  careful  proviso  against  confounding 
the  statement  of  fact  in  the  description  and  the  interpre- 
tation which  he  proceeds  to  put  upon  these  facts : — 

I  conceive  that  the  granulate  heaps  and  the  transparent 
gelatinous  matter  in  which  they  are  embedded  represent  masses 
of  protoplasm.  Take  away  the  cysts  which  characterise  the 
Radiolaria,  and  a  dead  S phaerosournvf ould  very  nearly  represent 
one  of  this  deep-sea  "  Ur-schleim,"  which  must,  I  think,  be  re- 
garded as  a  new  form  of  those  simple  animated  beings  which 
have  recently  been  so  well  described  by  Haeckel  in  his  Mono- 
graphic der  Moneras,  p.  210.* 

Of  this  he  writes  to  Haeckel  on  October  6,  1868 : — 

[This  paper]  is  about  a  new  "Moner"  which  lies  at  the 
bottom  of  the  Atlantic  to  all  appearances,  and  gives  rise  to 
some  wonderful  calcified  bodies.  I  have  christened  it  Bathybius 
Haeckelii,  and  I  hope  that  you  will  not  be  ashamed  of  your  god- 
child.   I  will  send  you  some  of  the  mud  with  the  paper. 

The  explanation  was  plausible  enough  on  general 
grounds,  if  the  evidence  had  been  all  that  it  seemed  to  be. 

♦  See  Coll.  Ess.  v.  153. 


3i8  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxii 

But  it  must  be  noted  that  the  specimens  examined  by  him 
and  by  Haeckel,  who  two  years  later  published  a  full  and 
detailed  description  of  Bathybius,  were  seen  in  a  preserved 
state.  Neither  of  them  saw  a  fresh  specimen,  though  on 
the  cruise  of  the  Porcupine,  Sir  Wyville  Thomson  and  Dr. 
W.  Carpenter  examined  the  substance  in  a  fresh  state,  and 
found  no  better  explanation  to  give  of  it.  However,  not 
only  were  the  expectations  that  it  was  very  widely  dis- 
tributed over  the  Atlantic  bottom,  falsified  in  1879  by  the 
researches  of  the  Challenger  expedition,  but  the  behaviour 
of  certain  deep-sea  specimens  gave  good  ground  for  sus- 
pecting that  what  had  been  sent  home  before  as  genuine 
deep-sea  mud,  was  a  precipitate  due  to  the  action  on  the 
specimens  of  the  spirit  in  which  they  were  preserved. 
Though  Haeckel,  with  his  special  experience  of  Monera, 
refused  to  desert  Bathybius,  a  close  parallel  to  which  was 
found  off  Greenland  in  1876,  the  rest  of  its  sponsors  gave 
it  up.  Whatever  it  might  be  as  a  matter  of  possibility,  the 
particular  evidence  upon  which  it  had  been  described  was 
tainted.  Once  assured  of  this,  Huxley  characteristically 
took  the  bull  by  the  horns.  Without  waiting  for  any  one 
else  to  come  forward,  he  made  public  renunciation  of  Ba- 
thybius at  the  British  Association  in  1879.*  The  "  eating  of 
the  leek  "  as  recommended  to  his  friend  Dohm  (July  7, 
1868),  was  not  merely  a  counsel  for  others,  but  was  a  pre- 
scription followed  by  himself  on  occasion : — 

"  As  you  know,  I  did  not  think  you  were  on  the  right  track 
with  the  Arthropoda,  and  I  am  not  going  to  profess  to  be  sorry 
that  you  have  finally  worked  yourself  to  that  conclusion. 

As  to  the  unlucky  publication  in  the  Journal  of  Anatomy  and 
Physiology,  you  have  read  your  Shakespeare  and  know  what  is 
meant  by  "  eating  a  leek."  Well,  every  honest  man  has  to  do 
that  now  and  then,  and  I  assure  you  that  if  eaten  fairly  and 
without  grimaces,  the  devouring  of  that  herb  has  a  very  whole- 
some cooling  effect  on  the  blood,  particularly  in  people  of  san- 
guine temperament. 

Seriously  you  must  not  mind  a  check  of  this  kind. 

*  See  vol.  ii.  p.  5,  s^. 


i868  STYLE  319 

This  incident,  one  may  suspect,  was  in  his  mind  when 
he  wrote  in  his  Autobiography  of  the  rapidity  of  thought 
characteristic  of  his  mother: — 

That  characteristic  has  been  passed  on  to  me  in  full 
strength ;  it  has  often  stood  me  in  good  stead,  it  has  sometimes 
played  me  sad  tricks,  and  it  has  always  been  a  danger. 

At  the  Norwich  meeting  of  the  Association  he  also  de- 
livered his  well-known  lecture  to  working  men  "  On  a 
Piece  of  Chalk,"  a  perfect  example  of  the  handling  of  a 
common  and  trivial  subject,  so  as  to  make  it  "  a  window 
into  the  Infinite."  He  was  particularly  interested  in  the 
success  of  the  meeting,  as  his  friend  Hooker  was  President, 
and  writes  to  Darwin,  September  12 : — 

We  had  a  capital  meeting  at  Norwich,  and  dear  old  Hooker 
came  out  in  great  force  as  he  always  does  in  emergencies. 

The  only  fault  was  the  terrible  "  Darwinismus "  which 
spread  over  the  section  and  crept  out  when  you  least  expected 
it,  even  in  Fergusson's  lecture  on  "  Buddhist  Temples." 

You  will  have  the  rare  happiness  to  see  your  ideas  tri- 
umphant during  your  lifetime. 

PS, — I  am  preparing  to  go  into  opposition ;  I  can't  stand  it. 

This  lecture  "  On  a  Piece  of  Chalk,"  together  with  two 
others  delivered  this  year,  seem  to  me  to  mark  the  matur- 
ing of  his  style  into  that  mastery  of  clear  expression  for 
which  he  deliberately  laboured,  the  saying  exactly  what  he 
meant,  neither  too  much  nor  too  little,  without  confusion 
and  without  obscurity.  Have  something  to  say,  and  say  it, 
was  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  theory  of  style ;  Huxley's  was 
to  say  that  which  has  to  be  said  in  such  language  that  you 
can  stand  cross-examination  on  each  word.  Be  clear, 
though  you  may  be  convicted  of  error.  If  you  are  clearly 
wrong,  you  will  run  up  against  a  fact  some  time  and  get  set 
right.  If  you  shuffle  with  your  subject,  and  study  chiefly  to 
use  language  which  will  give  a  loophole  of  escape  either 
way,  there  is  no  hope  for  you. 

This  was  the  secret  of  his  lucidity.  In  no  one  could 
BuflFon's  aphorism  on  style  find  a  better  illustration,  Le  style 
c'est  Fhomme  nicme.    In  him  science  and  literature,  too  often 


320 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxii 


divorced,  were  closely  united;  and  literature  owes  him  a 
debt  for  importing  into  it  so  much  of  the  highest  scientific 
habit  of  mind;  for  showing  that  truthfulness  need  not  be 
bald,  and  that  real  power  lies  more  in  exact  accuracy  than 
in  luxuriance  of  diction.  Years  after,  no  less  an  authority 
than  Spedding,  in  a  letter  upon  the  influence  of  Bacon  on 
his  own  style  in  the  matter  of  exactitude,  the  pruning  of  fine 
epithets  and  sweeping  statements,  the  reduction  of  number- 
less superlatives  to  positives,  asserted  that,  if  as  a  young 
man  he  had  fallen  in  with  Huxley's  writings  before  Bacon's, 
they  would  have  produced  the  same  effect  upon  him.* 

Of  the  other  two  discourses  referred  to,  one  is  the  open- 
ing address  which  he  delivered  as  Principal  at  the  South 
London  Working  Men's  College  on  January  4,  "  A  Liberal 
Education,  and  Where  to  Find  It."  This  is  not  a  brief  for 
science  to  the  exclusion  of  other  teaching;  no  essay  has 
insisted  more  strenuously  on  the  evils  of  a  one-sided  educa- 
tion, whether  it  be  classical  or  scientific;  but  it  urged  the 
necessity  for  a  strong  tincture  of  science  and  her  method, 
if  the  modern  conception  of  the  world,  created  by  the  spread 
of  natural  knowledge,  is  to  be  fairly  understood.  If  culture 
is  the  "  criticism  of  life,"  it  is  fallacious  if  deprived  of  knowl- 
edge of  the  most  important  factor  which  has  transformed 
the  medieval  into  the  modem  spirit 

Two  of  his  most  striking  passages  are  to  be  found  in 
this  address;  one  the  simile  of  the  force  behind  nature  as 
the  hidden  chess  player ;  the  other  the  noble  description  of 
the  end  of  a  true  education. 

Well  known  as  it  is,  I  venture  to  quote  the  latter  as  an 
instance  of  his  style : — 

That  man,  I  think,  has  had  a  liberal  education,  who  has  been 
so  trained  in  youth  that  his  body  is  the  ready  servant  of  his  will, 
and  does  with  ease  and  pleasure  all  the  work  that  as  a  mechan- 
ism it  is  capable  of ;  whose  intellect  is  a  clear  cold  logic  engine, 
with  all  its  parts  of  equal  strength,  and  in  smooth  working 
order;  ready,  like  a  steam  engine,  to  be  turned  to  any  kind  of 
work,  and  spin  the  gossamers  as  well  as  forge  the  anchors  of 
the  mind;  whose  mind  is  stored  with  a  knowledge  of  the  great 

*  See  p.  520. 


i868-^  THE   PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF   LIFE  32 1 

and  fundamental  truths  of  nature  and  of  the  laws  of  her  opera- 
tions; one  who,  no  stunted  ascetic,  is  full  of  life  and  fire,  but 
whose  passions  are  trained  to  come  to  heel  by  a  vigorous  will, 
the  servant  of  a  tender  conscience;  who  has  learned  to  love  all 
beauty,  whether  of  nature  or  of  art,  to  hate  all  vileness,  and  to 
respect  others  as  himself. 

Such  an  one  and  ho  other,  I  conceive,  has  had  a  liberal  edu- 
cation, for  he  is,  as  completely  as  a  man  can  be,  in  harmony  with 
nature.  He  will  make  the  best  of  her,  and  she  of  him.  They 
will  get  on  together  rarely;  she  as  his  ever-beneficent  mother; 
he  as  her  mouth-piece,  her  conscious  self,  her  minister  and 
interpreter. 

The  third  of  these  discourses  is  the  address  "  On  the 
Physical  Basis  of  Life,"  of  which  he  writes  to  Haeckel  on 
January  20,  1869 : — 

You  will  be  amused  to  hear  that  I  went  to  the  holy  city, 
Edinburgh  itself,  the  other  day,  for  the  purpose  of  giving  the  first 
of  a  series  of  Sunday  lectures.  I  came  back  without  being 
stoned;  but  Murchison  (who  is  a  Scotchman  you  know),  told  me 
he  thought  it  was  the  boldest  act  of  my  life.  The  lecture  will 
be  published  in  February,  and  I  shall  send  it  to  you,  as  it  con- 
tains a  criticism  of  materialism  which  I  should  like  you  to 
consider. 

In  it  he  explains  in  popular  form  a  striking  generalisa- 
tion of  scientific  research,  namely,  that  whether  in  animals 
or  plants,  the  structural  unit  of  the  living  body  is  made  up 
of  similar  material,  and  that  vital  action  and  even  thought 
are  ultimately  based  upon  molecular  changes  in  this  life- 
stuff.  Materialism!  g^oss  and  brutal  materialism!  was  the 
mildest  comment  he  expected  in  some  quarters;  and  he 
took  the  opportunity  to  explain  how  he  held  "  this  union  of 
materialistic  terminology  with  the  repudiation  of  material- 
istic philosophy,"  considering  the  latter  "  to  involve  grave 
philosophic  error." 

His  expectations  were  fully  justified ;  in  fact,  he  writes 
that  some  persons  seemed  to  imagine  that  he  had  invented 
protoplasm  for  the  purposes  of  the  lecture. 

Here,  too,  in  the  course  of  a  reply  to  Archbishop 
Thompson's  confusion  of  the  spirit  of  modem  thought  with 


322  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxii 

the  system  of  M.  Comte,  he  launched  his  well-known  defini- 
tion of  Comtism  as  Catholicism  minus  Christianity,  which 
involved  him  in  a  short  controversy  with  Mr.  Congreve  (see 
"  The  Scientific  Aspects  of  Positivism,"  Lay  Sermons,  p. 
162),  and  with  another  leading  Positivist,  who  sent  him  a 
letter  through  Mr.  Darwin.    Huxley  replied : — 

Jermyn  Street.  March  11,  1869. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  know  quite  enough  of  Mr. to  have 

paid  every  attention  to  what  he  has  to  say,  even  if  you  had  not 
been  his  ambassador. 

I  glanced  over  his  letter  when  I  returned  home  last  night 
very  tired  with  my  two  nights'  chairmanship  at  the  Ethnological 
and  the  Geological  Societies. 

Most  of  it  is  fair  enough,  though  I  must  say  not  helping  me 
to  any  novel  considerations. 

Two  paragraphs,  however,  contained  opinions  which  Mr. 

is  at  perfect  liberty  to  entertain,  but  not,   I  think,  to 

express  to  me. 

The  one  is,  that  I  shaped  what  I  had  to  say  at  Edinburgh 
with  a  view  of  stirring  up  the  prejudices  of  the  Scotch  Presby- 
terians (imagine  how  many  Presbyterians  I  had  in  my  audi- 
ences!) against  Comte. 

The  other  is  the  concluding  paragraph,  in  which  Mr. 

recommends  me  to  " read  Comte"  clearly  implying  that  I  have 
criticised  Comte  without  reading  him. 

You  will  know  how  far  I  am  likely  to  have  committed  either 
of  the  immoralities  thus  laid  to  my  charge. 

At  any  rate,  I  do  not  think  I  care  to  enter  into  more  direct 
relations  with  anyone  who  so  heedlessly  and  unjustifiably  as- 
sumes me  to  be  guilty  of  them.      Therefore  I  shall  content 

myself  with  acknowledging  the  receipt  of   Mr.  *s  letter 

through  you. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Jermyn  Street,  March  17,  1869. 

My  dear  Darwin — After  I  had  sent  my  letter  to  you  the 
other  day  I  thought  how  stupid  I  had  been  not  to  put  in  a  slip 
of  paper  to  say  it  was  meant  for 's  edification. 

I  made  sure  you  would  understand  that  I  wished  it  to  be 
sent  on,  and  wrote  it  (standing  on  the  points  of  my  toes  and 
with  my  tail  up  very  stiff)  with  that  end  in  view. 

[Sketch  of  two  dogs  bristling  up.] 

I  am  getting  so  weary  of  people  writing  to  propose  con- 


i869  ^    HUXLEY'S  JUDGMENT  OF  COMTE  323 

troversy  to  me  upon  one  point  or  another,  that  I  begin  to  wish 
the  article  had  never  been  written.  The  fighting  in  itself  is  not 
particularly  objectionable,  but  it's  the  waste  of  time. 

I  begin  to  understand  your  sufferings  over  the  Origin.  A 
good  book  is  comparable  to  a  piece  of  meat,  and  fools  are  as 
flies  who  swarm  to  it^  each  for  the  purpose  of  depositing  and 
hatching  his  own  particular  maggot  of  an  idea. — Efver  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

A  little  later  he  wrote  to  Charles  Kingsley,  who  had 
supported  him  in  the  controversy: — 

Jermyn  Street,  Apri/  12,  1869. 

My  dear  K1N9SLEY — Tlianks  for  your  hearty  bottle-holding. 

Congreve  is  no  better  than  a  donkey  to  take  the  line  he  does. 
I  studied  Comte,  Philosophic,  Politique,  and  all  sixteen  years 
ago,  and  having  formed  my  judgment  about  him,  put  it  into 
one  of  the  pigeon  holes  of  my  brain  (about  the  H.*  minor),  and 
there  let  it  rest  till  it  was  wanted. 

You  are  perfectly  right  in  saying  that  Comte  knew  nothing 
about  physical  science — it  is  one  of  the  points  I  am  going  to 
put  in  evidence. 

The  law  of  the  three  states  is  mainly  evolved  from  his  own 
consciousness,  and  is  only  a  bad  way  of  expressing  that  tendency 
to  personification  which  is  inherent  in  man. 

The  Classification  of  Sciences  is  bosh — as  Spencer  has 
already  shown. 

Nothing  short  of  madness,  however,  can  have  dictated  Con- 
greve's  challenge  of  my  admiration  of  Comte  as  a  man  at  the 
end  of  his  article.  Did  you  ever  read  Littre's  Life  of  Cotntef 
I  bought  it  when  it  came  out  a  year  or  more  ago,  and  I  rose 
from  its  perusal  with  a  feeling  of  sheer  disgust  and  contempt 
for  the  man  who  could  treat  a  noble-hearted  woman  who  had 
saved  his  life  and  his  reason,  as  Comte  treated  his  wife. 

As  soon  as  I  have  time  I  will  deal  with  Comte  effectually, 
you  may  depend  upon  that.  At  the  same  time,  I  shall  endeavour 
to  be  just  to  what  there  is  (as  I  hold),  really  great  and  good  in 
his  clear  conception  of  the  necessity  of  reconstructing  society 
from  the  bottom  to  the  top  "  sans  dieu  ni  roi,"  if  I  may  interpret 
that  somewhat  tall  phrase  as  meaning  "with  our  conceptions 
of  religion  and  politics  on  a  scientific  basis." 

*  The  Hippocampus  minor:  compare  p.  206. 


324 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY       ^    chap,  xxh 


Comte  in  his  later  days  was  an  apostate  from  his  own  creed  ; 
his  "nouveau  grand  Etre  supreme"  being  as  big  a  fetish  as 
ever  nigger  first  made  and  then  worshipped. — Ever  yours  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  how  he  invariably  submitted 
his  writings  to  the  criticism  of  his  wife  before  they  were 
seen  by  any  other  eye.  To  her  judgment  was  due  the 
toning  down  of  many  a  passage  which  erred  by  excess  of 
vigour,  and  the  clearing  up  of  phrases  which  would  be 
obscure  to  the  public.  In  fact,  if  an  essay  met  with  her 
approval,  he  felt  sure  it  would  not  fail  of  its  effect  when 
published.  Writing  to  her  from  Norwich  on  August  23, 
1868,  he  confesses  himself  with  reference  to  the  lecture  "  On 
a  Piece  of  Chalk  "  :— 

I  met  Grove  who  edits  Mactnillan,  at  the  soiree.  He  pulled 
the  proof  of  my  lecture  out  of  his  pocket  and  said,  "  Look  here, 
there  is  one  paragraph  in  your  lecture  I  can  make  neither  top 
nor  tail  of.  I  can't  understand  what  it  means."  I  looked  to 
where  his  finger  pointed,  and  behold  it  was  the  paragraph  you 
objected  to  when  I  read  you  the  lecture  on  the  sea  shore!  I 
told  him,  and  said  I  should  confess,  however  set  up  it  might 
make  you. 

At  the  beginning  of  September,  he  rejoined  his  wife  and 
family  at  Littlehampton,  "  a  grand  place  for  children,  be- 
cause you  go  up  rather  than  down  into  the  sea,  and  it  is 
quite  impossible  for  them  to  get  into  mischief  by  falling," 
as  he  described  it  to  his  friend  Dr.  Dohm,  who  came  down 
for  ten  days,  eagerly  looking  forward  "  to  stimulating  walks 
over  stock  and  stone,  to  Tennyson,  Herbert  Spencer,  and 
Harry's  ringing  laugh." 

The  latter  half  of  the  month  he  spent  at  or  near  Dublin, 
serving  upon  the  Commission  on  Science  and  Art  In- 
struction : — 

To-day  (he  writes  on  September  16),  we  shall  be  occupied 
in  inspecting  the  School  of  Science  and  the  Glasnevin  botanical 
and  agricultural  gardens,  and  to-morrow  we  begin  the  session 
work  of  examining  all  the  Irishry,  who  want  jobs  perpetrated. 
It  is  weary  work,  and  the  papers  are  already  beginning  to  tell 
lies  about  us  and  attack  us. 


i868  LETTERS  TO   HAECKEL  AND   DOHRN  325 

The  rest  of  the  year  he  remained  in  London,  except 
the  last  four  days  of  December,  when  he  was  lecturing  at 
Newcastle,  and  stayed  with  Sir  W.  Armstrong  at  Jesmond. 

To  Professor  Haeckel 

Jan,  21,  1868. 

Don't  you  think  we  did  a  right  thing  in  awarding  the  Copley 
Medal  to  Baer  last  year  ?  The  old  man  was  much  pleased,  and  it 
was  a  comfort  to  me  to  think  that  we  had  not  let  him  go  to  his 
grave  without  the  highest  honour  we  had  to  bestow. 

I  am  over  head  and  ears,  as  we  say,  in  work,  lecturing, 
giving  addresses  to  the  working  men  and  (figurez  vous!)  to 
the  clergy.* 

In  scientific  work  the  main  thing  just  now  about  which  I  am 
engaged  is  a  revision  of  the  Dinosauria,  with  an  eye  to  the 
"  Descendenz  Theorie."  The  road  from  Reptiles  to  Birds  is  by 
way  of  Dinosauria  to  the  Ratitae.  The  bird  "phylum"  was 
struthious,  and  wings  grew  out  of  rudimentary  forelimbs. 

You  see  that  among  other  things  I  have  been  reading  Ernst 
Haeckel's  Morphologie. 

The  next  two  letters  reflect  his  views  on  the  proper 
work  to  be  undertaken  by  men  of  unusual  scientific  ca- 
pacity— 

Jermvn  Street, /flif.  15,  1868. 

My  dear  Dohrn — Though  the  most  procrastinating  corre- 
spondent in  existence  when  a  letter  does  not  absolutely  require 
an  answer,  I  am  tolerably  well-behaved  when  something  needs 
to  be  said  or  done  immediately.  And  as  that  appears  to  me  to 
be  the  case  with  your  letter  of  the  13th  which  has  this  moment 
reached  me,  I  lose  no  time  in  replying  to  it. 

The  Calcutta  appointment  has  been  in  my  hands  as  well  as 
Turner's,  and  I  have  made  two  or  three  efforts,  all  of  which  un- 
fortunately have  proved  unsuccessful  to  find;  (i)  A  man  who 

♦  On  December  12,  1867,  there  was  a  meeting  of  clergy  at  Sion 
House,  under  the  auspices  of  Dean  Farrar  and  the  Rev.  W.  Rogers  of 
Bishopsgate,  when  the  bearing  of  recent  science  upon  orthodox  dogma 
was  discussed.  First  Huxley  delivered  an  address :  some  of  the 
clergy  present  denounced  airy  concessions  as  impossible;  others 
declared  that  they  had  long  ago  accepted  the  teachings  of  geology ; 
whereupon  a  candid  friend  inquired,  "Then  why  don't  you  say  so 
from  your  pulpits?"    (See  CM  Ess,  iii.  119.) 


326  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxii 

will  do  for  it  and  at  the  same  time  (2)  for  whom  it  will  do. 
Now  you  fulfil  the  first  condition  admirably,  but  as  to  the  second 
I  have  very  great  doubts. 

In  the  first  place  the  climate  of  Calcutta  is  not  particularly 
good  for  anyone  who  has  a  tendency  to  dysentery,  and  I  doubt 
very  much  if  you  would  stand  it  for  six  months. 

Secondly,  we  have  a  proverb  that  it  is  not  wise  to  use  razors 
to  cut  blocks. 

The  business  of  the  man  who  is  appointed  to  that  museum 
will  be  to  get  it  into  order.  If  he  does  his  duty  he  will  give  his 
time  and  attention  to  museum  work  pure  and  simple,  and  I 
don't  think  that  (especially  in  an  Indian  climate),  he  has  much 
energy  left  for  an3rthing  else  after  the  day's  work  is  done.  Nam- 
ing and  arranging  specimens  is  a  most  admirable  and  useful 
emplo3rment,  but  when  you  have  done  it  is  "  cutting  blocks,"  and 
you,  my  friend,  are  a  most  indubitable  razor,  and  I  do  not  wish 
to  have  your  edge  blunted  in  that  fashion. 

If  it  were  necessary  for  you  to  win  your  own  bread,  one's 
advice  might  be  modified.  Under  such  circumstances  one  must 
do  things  which  are  not  entirely  desirable.  But  for  you  who 
are  your  own  master  and  have  a  career  before  you,  to  bind 
yourself  down  to  work  six  hours  a  day  at  things  you  do  not 
care  about  and  which  others  could  do  just  as  well,  while  you 
are  neglecting  the  things  which  you  do  care  for,  and  which 
others  could  not  do  so  well,  would,  I  think,  be  amazingly  unwise. 

Liberavi  animam!  don't  tell  my  Indian  friends  I  have  dis- 
suaded you,  but  on  my  conscience  I  could  give  no  other  advice. 

We  have  to  thank  you  three  times  over.  In  the  first  place 
for  a  portrait  which  has  taken  its  place  among  those  of  our 
other  friends;  secondly  for  the  great  pleasure  you  gave  my 
little  daughter  Jessie,  by  the  books  you  so  kindly  sent;  and 
thirdly,  for  Fanny  Lewald's  autobiography  which  arrived  a  few 
days  ago. 

Jessie  is  meditating  a  letter  of  thanks  (a  serious  undertak- 
ing), and  when  it  is  sent  the  mother  will  have  a  word  to  say 
for  herself. 

In  the  middle  of  October  scarlet  fever  broke  out  among  my 
children,  and  they  have  all  had  it  in  succession,  except  Jessie, 
who  took  it  seven  years  ago.  The  last  convalescent  is  now  well, 
but  we  had  the  disease  in  the  hou^e  nearly  three  months,  and 
have  been  like  lepers,  cut  off  from  all  communication  with  our 
neighbours  for  that  time. 

We  have  had  a  great  deal  of  anxiety,  and  my  wife  has  been 


i868  HAECKEL'S  MORPHOLOGIE 


327 


pretty  nearly  worn  out  with  nursing  day  and  night;  but  by 
great  good  fortune  "  the  happy  family  "  has  escaped  all  perma- 
nent injury,  and  you  might  hear  as  much  laughter  in  the  house 
as  at  Swanage. 

Will  you  be  so  kind  as  to  thank  Professor  Gegenbaur  for  a 
paper  on  the  development  of  the  vertebral  colimin  of  Lepidos- 
teum  I  have  just  received  from  him  ?  He  has  been  writing  about 
the  process  of  ossification  and  the  "  deck-knochen  "  question,  but 
I  catmot  make  out  exactly  where.    Could  you  let  me  know  ? 

I  am  anxious  for  the  Arthropoden  Werk,  but  I  expect  to 
gasp  when  it  comes. 

Turn  to  p.  380  of  the  new  edition  of  our  friend  Kolliker's 
Handbuch,  and  you  will  find  that  though  a  view  which  I  took 
of  the  "  organon  adamantinae  "  some  twelve  or  fourteen  years 
ago,  and  which  Kolliker  has  up  to  this  time  repudiated,  turns 
out,  and  is  now  admitted  by  him,  to  be  perfectly  correct,  yet 
"  that  I  was  not  acquainted  with  the  facts  that  would  justify 
the  conclusion."    Really,  if  I  had  time  I  could  be  angry. 

Pray  remember  me  most  kindly  to  Haeckel,  to  all  whose 
enemies  I  wish  confusion,  and  believe  me,  ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

PS. — I  have  read  a  hundred  pages  or  so  of  Fanny  Lewald's 
1st  Bd.,  and  am  delighted  with  her  insight  into  child-life. 

Tyndall  was  resigning  his  lectureship  at  the  School  of 
Mines — 

Jermvn  Street, /««/  10,  1868. 

My  dear  Tyndall — All  I  can  say  is,  I  am  heartily  sorry. 

If  you  feel  that  your  lectures  here  interfere  with  your  origi- 
nal work,  I  should  not  be  a  true  friend  either  to  science  or 
yourself  if  I  said  a  word  against  your  leaving  us. 

But  for  all  that  I  am  and  shall  remain  very  sorry. — Ever 
yours  very  sincerely,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

If  you  recommend ,  of  course  I  shall  be  very  glad  to 

support  him  in  any  way  I  can.  But  at  present  I  am  rather  dis- 
posed to  d ^n  anyone  who  occupies  your  place. 

The  following  .extract  is  from  a  letter  to  Haeckel 
(November  13,  1868),  with  reference  to  the  proposed  trans- 
lation of  his  Morphologic  by  the  Ray  Society : — 

We  shall  at  once  look  out  for  a  good  translator  of  the  text, 
as  the  job  will  be  a  long  and  a  tough  one.    My  wife  (who  sends 
33 


328  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxii 

her  best  wishes  and  congratulations  on  your  fatherhood)  will 
do  the  bits  of  Goethe's  poetry,  and  I  will  look  after  the  prose 
citations. 

Next  as  to  the  text  itself.  The  council  were  a  little  alarmed 
at  the  bulk  of  the  book,  and  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  that 
it  should  be  condensed  to  the  uttermost. 

Furthermore,  English  propriety  had  taken  fright  at  nunours 
touching  the  aggressive  heterodoxy  of  some  passages.  (We  do 
not  much  mind  heterodoxy  here,  if  it  does  not  openly  proclaim 
itself  as  such.) 

And  on  both  these  points  I  had  not  only  to  give  very  dis- 
tinct assurances,  such  as  I  thought  your  letters  had  entitled  me 
to  give ;  but  in  a  certain  sense  to  become  myself  responsible  for 
your  behaving  yourself  like  a  good  boy ! 

If  I  had  not  known  you  and  understood  your  nature  and  dis- 
position as  I  fancy  I  do,  I  should  not  have  allowed  myself  to  be 
put  in  this  position;  but  I  have  implicit  faith  in  your  doing 
what  is  wise  and  right,  and  so  making  it  tenable. 

There  is  not  the  slightest  desire  to  make  you  mutilate  your 
book  or  leave  out  anything  which  you  conceive  to  be  absolutely 
essential ;  and  I  on  my  part  should  certainly  not  think  of  asking 
you  to  make  any  alteration  which  would  not  in  my  judgment 
improve  the  book  quite  irrespectively  of  the  tastes  of  the  British 
public. 

[Alterations  are  suggested.]  But  I  stop.  By  this  time  you 
will  be  swearing  at  me  for  attacking  all  your  favourite  bits. 
Let  me  know  what  you  think  about  these  matters. 

I  congratulate  you  and  Madame  Haeckel  heartily  on  the 
birth  of  your  boy.  Children  work  a  greater  metamorphosis  in 
men  than  any  other  condition  of  life.  They  ripen  one  wonder- 
fully and  make  life  ten  times  better  worth  having  than  it  was. 

26  Abbey  Place,  Nov.  15,  1868. 
My  dear  Darwin — You  are  always  the  bienvenu,  and  we 
shall  be  right  glad  to  see  you  on  Sunday  morning. 

We  breakfast  at  8.30,  and  the  decks  are  clear  before  nine.  I 
would  offer  you  breakfast,  but  I  know  it  does  not  suit  you  to 
come  out  unfed;  and  besides  you  would  abuse  the  opportunity 
to  demoralise  Harry.* — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

*  This  small  boy  of  nearly  four  was  a  great  favourite  of  Darwin's. 
When  we  children  were  all  staying  at  Down  about  this  time,  Darwin 


i868  NOTE   TO  DARWIN 


329 


An  undated  note  to  Darwin  belongs  to  the  very  end  of 
this  year,  or  to  the  beginning  of  the  next : — 

The  two  volumes  of  the  new  book  have  just  reached  me. 
My  best  thanks  for  them;  and  if  you  can  only  send  me  a  little 
time  for  reading  within  the  next  three  months  you  will  heighten 
the  obligation  twenty-fold,  I  wish  I  had  either  two  heads  or  a 
body  that  needed  no  rest ! 

himself  would  come  in  upon  us  at  dinner,  and  patting  him  on  the 
head,  utter  what  has  become  a  household  word  amongst  us,  *'  Make 
yourself  at  home,  and  take  large  mouthfuls.*' 


CHAPTER   XXIII 
1869 

In  1869  Huxley  published  five  paleontological  papers, 
chiefly  upon  the  Dinosaurs  (see  letter  above  to  Haeckel, 
January  21,  1868).  His  physiological  researches  upon  the 
development  of  parts  of  the  skull,  are  represented  by  a  paper 
for  the  Zoological  Society,  while  the  Introdtiction  to  the 
Classification  of  Animals  was  a  reprint  this  year  of  the  sub- 
stance of  six  lectures  in  the  first  part  of  the  lectures  on 
Elementary  Comparative  Anatomy  (1864),  which  were  out  of 
print,  but  still  in  demand  by  students. 

As  President  of  the  Ethnological  Society,  he  delivered 
an  inaugural  address  "  On  the  Ethnology  and  Archaeology 
of  India,"  on  March  9,  and  another  "  On  the  Ethnology  and 
Archaeology  of  North  America,"  on  April  13.  As  president 
of  the  Society,  moreover,  he  urged  upon  the  Government 
the  advisability  of  forming  a  systematic  series  of  photo- 
graphs of  the  various  races  comprehended  in  the  British 
Empire,  and  was  officially  called  upon  to  offer  suggestions 
for  carrying  out  the  project  This  appears  to  be  an  ampli- 
fication of  Sir  Joseph  Fayrer's  plan  in  1866,  with  respect 
to  all  the  tribes  of  India  (see  p.  294,  and  Appendix  I.). 

On  April  7  he  delivered  his  "  Scientific  Education : 
Notes  of  an  After-Dinner  Speech  "  before  the  Philomathic 
Society  at  Liverpool  (Coll.  Ess.  iii.  3),  one  part  of  which 
deals  with  the  attitude  of  the  clergy  towards  physical  sci- 
ence, and  expresses  the  necessary  antagonism  between  sci- 
ence and  Roman  Catholic  doctrine  which  appears  more 
forcibly  in  one  of  his  speeches  at  the  School  Board  in 
1 871  (see  p.  384). 
330 


i869  PHYSIOGRAPHY  33 1 

In  this  and  other  educational  addresses,  he  had  sug- 
gested that  one  of  the  best  ways  of  imparting  to  children  a 
preliminary  knowledge  of  the  phenomena  of  nature  would 
be  a  course  of  what  the  Germans  call  "  Erdkunde,"  or  gen- 
eral information  about  the  world  we  live  in.  It  should 
reach  from  our  simplest  everyday  observations  to  wide  gen- 
eralisations of  physical  science ;  and  should  supply  a  back- 
ground for  the  study  of  history.  To  this  he  gave  the  name 
"  Physiography,"  a  name  which  he  believed  to  be  original, 
until  in  1877  his  attention  was  called  to  the  fact  that  a 
Physiographic'  had  been  published  in  Paris  thirty  years 
before. 

The  idea  was  no  new  one  with  him.  Part  of  his  pre- 
liminary lectures  at  the  School  of  Mines  had  been  devoted 
to  something  of  the  kind  for  the  last  dozen  years ;  he  had 
served  on  the  Committee  of  the  British  Association,  ap- 
pointed in  1866  as  the  result  of  a  paper  by  the  present  Dean 
Farrar,  then  a  Harrow  master,  "  On  the  Teaching  of  Science 
in  the  Public  Schools,"  *  to  report  upon  the  whole  question. 
Moreover,  in  consultation  with  Dr.  Tyndall,  he  had  drawn 
up  a  scheme  in  the  winter  1868-69,  for  the  science  teaching 
in  the  International  College,  on  the  Council  of  which  they 
both  were. 

Seven  yearly  grades  were  arranged  in  this  scheme,  pro- 
ceeding from  the  simplest  account  of  the  phenomena  of 
nature  taught  chiefly  by  object  lessons,  largely  through  the 
elements  of  Physics  and  Botany,  Chemistry  and  Human 
Physiology — all  illustrated  with  practical  demonstrations — 
to  more  advanced  work  in  these  subjects,  as  well  as  in 
Social  Science,  which  embraced  not  only  the  theory  of 
commerce  and  government,  but  the  Natural  History  of  Man 
up  to  the  point  at  which  Ethnology  and  Archaeology  touch 
history. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  framers  of  this  report 
thought  it  necessary  to  point  out  that  one  master  could  not 
teach  all  these  subjects. 

In  the  three  later  stages  the  boys  might  follow  alter- 

♦  See  p.  298. 


332  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiii 

native  lines  of  study  according  to  their  tastes  and  capacities ; 
but  of  the  earlier  part,  which  was  to  be  obligatory  upon  all, 
the  report  says: — ^These  four  years  study,  if  properly  em- 
ployed by  the  teachers,  will  constitute  a  complete  prepara- 
tory scientific  course.  However  slight  the  knowledge  of 
details  conferred,  a  wise  teacher  of  any  of  these  subjects  will 
be  able  to  make  that  teaching  thorough;  and  to  give  the 
scholar  a  notion  of  the  methods  and  of  the  ideas  which  he 
will  meet  with  in  his  further  progress  in  all  branches  of 
physical  science. 

In  fact,  the  fundamental  principle  was  to  begin  with 
Observational  Science,  facts  collected ;  to  proceed  to  Classi- 
ficatory  Science,  facts  arranged;  and  to  end  with  Induc- 
tive Science,  facts  reasoned  upon  and  laws  deduced. 

While  he  was  much  occupied  with  the  theoretical  and 
practical  difficulties  of  such  a  scheme  of  science  teaching 
for  general  use,  he  was  asked  by  his  friend,  the  Rev.  W. 
Rogers  of  Bishopsgate,  if  he  would  not  deliver  a  course  of 
lectures  on  elementary  science  to  boys  of  the  schools  in 
which  the  latter  was  interested. 

He  finally  accepted  in  the  following  letter,  and  as  the 
result,  delivered  twelve  lectures  week  by  week  from  April 
to  June  to  a  large  audience  at  the  London  Institution  in 
Finsbury  Circus,  lectures  not  easily  forgotten  by  the  chil- 
dren who  listened  to  them  nor  by  their  elders: — 

Jermyn  Street,  Feb,  5,  1869. 

My  dear  Rogers — Upon  due  reflection  I  am  not  indisposed 
to  undertake  the  course  of  lessons  we  talked  about  the  other 
day,  though  they  will  cost  me  a  good  deal  of  trouble  in  various 
ways,  and  at  a  time  of  the  year  when  I  am  getting  to  the  end 
of  my  tether  and  don't  much  like  trouble. 

But  the  scheme  is  too  completely  in  harmony  with  what  (in 
conjunction  with  Tyndall  and  others)  I  have  been  trying  to 
bring  about  in  schools  in  general  —  not  to  render  it  a  great 
temptation  to  me  to  try  to  get  it  into  practical  shape. 

All  I  have  to  stipulate  is  that  we  shall  have  a  clear  under- 
standing on  the  part  of  the  boys  and  teachers  that  the  discourses 
are  to  [be]  Lessons  and  not  talkee-talkee  lectures.  I  should 
like  it  to  be  understood  that  the  boys  are  to  take  notes  and  to 
be  examined  at  the  end  of  the  course.      Of  course  I  cannot 


i869  ••GEOLOGICAL  REFORM"  333 

undertake  to  be  examiner,  but  the  schools  might  make  some 
arrangement  on  this  point. 

You  see  my  great  object  is  to  set  going  something  which  can 
be  worked  in  every  school  in  the  country  in  a  thorough  and 
effectual  way,  and  set  an  example  of  the  manner  in  which  I 
think  this  sort  of  introduction  to  science  ought  to  be  managed. 

Unless  this  can  be  done  I  would  rather  not  embark  in  a 
project  which  will  involve  much  labour,  worry,  and  interruption 
to  my  regular  line  of  work. 

I  met  Mr.  [illegible]  last  night,  and  discussed  the  subject 
briefly  with  him. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  enclose  a  sort  of  rough  programme  of  the  kind  of  thing  I 
mean,  cut  up  from  a  project  of  instruction  for  a  school  about 
which  I  am  now  busy.  The  managers  might  like  to  see  it.  But 
I  shall  be  glad  to  have  it  returned. 

These  lectures  were  repeated  in  November  at  South 
Kensington  Museum,  as  the  first  part  of  a  threefold  course 
to  women  on  the  elements  of  physical  science,  and  the 
Times  reporter  naively  remarks  that  under  the  rather  alarm- 
ing name  of  Physiography,  many  of  the  audience  were  no 
doubt  surprised  to  hear  an  exceedingly  simple  and  lucid 
description  of  a  river-basin.  Want  of  leisure  prevented  him 
from  bringing  out  the  lectures  in  book  form  until  November 
1877.  When  it  did  appear,  however,  the  book,  like  his 
other  popular  works,  had  a  wide  sale,  and  became  the  fore- 
runner of  an  immense  number  of  school-books  on  the 
subject. 

As  President  of  the  Geological  Society,  he  delivered  an 
address  (Coll.  Ess,  viii.  305),  at  the  anniversary  meeting, 
February  19,  upon  the  "  Geological  Reform  "  demanded  by 
the  considerations  advanced  by  the  physicists,  as  to  the  age 
of  the  earth  and  the  duration  of  life  upon  it.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  biology  he  was  ready  to  accept  the  limits  sug- 
gested, provided  that  the  premisses  of  Sir  William  Thom- 
son's *  argument  were  shown  to  be  perfectly  reliable;  but  he 
pointed  out  a  number  of  considerations  which  might  pro- 
foundly modify  the  results  of  the  isolated  causes  adduced ; 

*  Now  Lord  Kelvin.    • 


334 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiii 


and  uttered  a  warning  against  the  possible  degradation  of 
**  a  proper  reverence  for  mathematical  certainty  "  into  "  a 
superstitious  respect  for  all  arguments  arrived  at  by  process 
of  mathematics."  * 

At  the  close  of  the  year,  as  his  own  period  of  office 
came  to  an  end,  it  was  necessary  to  select  a  new  presi- 
dent of  the  Geological.  He  strongly  urged  Professor 
(afterwards  Sir  Joseph)  Prestwich  to  stand,  and  when 
the  latter  consented,  a  few  weeks,  by  the  way,  before 
his  marriage  was  to  take  place,  replied: — 

Jermyn  Street,  Dec,  i6,  1869. 

My  dear  Prestwich — Many  thanks  for  your  letter.  Your 
consent  to  become  our  President  for  the  next  period  will  give  as 
unfeigned  satisfaction  to  the  whole  body  of  the  Society  as  it  does 
to  me  and  your  other  personal  friends. 

I  have  looked  upon  the  affair  as  settled  since  our  last  talk, 
and  a  very  great  relief  it  has  been  to  my  mind. 

There  is  no  doubt  public-dinner  speaking  (and  indeed  all 
public  speaking)  is  nervous  work.  I  funk  horribly,  though  I 
never  get  the  least  credit  for  it  But  it  is  like  swimming,  the 
worst  of  it  is  in  the  first  plunge ;  and  after  you  have  taken  your 
"header"  it's  not  so  bad  (just  like  matrimony,  by  the  way; 
only  don't  be  so  mean  as  to  go  and  tell  a  certain  lady  I  said  so, 
because  I  want  to  stand  well  in  her  books). 

Of  course  you  may  command  me  in  all  wa3rs  in  which  I  can 
possibly  be  of  use.  But  as  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  Society,  and 
personally  and  scientifically  popular  with  the  whole  body,  you 
start  with  an  immense  advantage  over  me,  and  will  find  no 
difficulties  before  you. 

We  will  consider  this  business  formally  settled,  and  I  shall 
speak  of  it  officially. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  cannot  place  the  following  letter  to  Matthew  Arnold 
with  certainty,  but  it  must  have  been  written  about  this 
period. f     Everyone  will  sympathise  with  the  situation: — 

*  See  C9II.  Ess,  viii.  Introd.  p.  8. 

t  The  most  probable  date  being  1869,  for  on  July  i  of  that  year  he 
dined  with  Matthew  Arnold  at  Harrow. 


i869  PALEONTOLOGICAL  WORK  335 

26  Abbey  PhACR,/ufy  8. 
My  dear  Arnold— Look  at  Bishop  Wilson  on  the  sin  of 
covetousness  and  then  inspect  your  umbrella  stand.     You  will 
there  see  a  beautiful  brown  smooth-handled  umbrella  which  is 
not  your  property. 

Think  of  what  the  excellent  prelate  would  have  advised 
and  bring  it  with  you  next  time  you  come  to  the  club.  The 
porter  will  take  care  of  it  for  me. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  following  letter  shows  how  paleontological  work 
was  continually  pouring  in  upon  him : — 

Jermyn  Street,  Afay  7,  1869. 

My  dear  Darwin — Do  you  recollect  recommending*  that 
the  Nassau,  which  sailed  under  Capt  Mayne's  command  for 
Magellan's  Straits  some  years  ago  should  explore  a  fossiliferous 
deposit  at  the  Gallegos  River  ? 

They  visited  the  place  the  other  day  as  you  will  see  by  Cun- 
ningham's letter  which  I  enclose,  and  got  some  fossils  which 
are  now  in  my  hands. 

The  skull  to  which  Cunningham  refers,  consists  of  little 
more  than  the  jaws,  but  luckily  nearly  all  the  teeth  are  in  place, 
and  prove  it  to  be  an  entirely  new  ungulate  mammal  with  teeth 
in  uninterrupted  series  like  Anoplotherium,  about  as  big  as  a 
small  horse. 

What  a  wonderful  assemblage  of  beasts  there  seems  to  have 
been  in  South  America !  I  suspect  if  we  could  find  them  all  they 
would  make  the  classification  of  the  Mammalia  into  a  horrid 
mess. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

And  on  July  16,  1869,  he  writes  again  to  Darwin : — 

To  tell  you  the  truth,  what  with  fossils,  Ethnology  and  the 
great  question  of  "  Darwinismus  "  which  is  such  a  worry  to  us 
all,  I  have  lost  sight  of  the  collectors  and  naturalists  "  by  grace 
of  the  dredge,"  almost  as  completely  as  you  have. 

Indeed,  the  pressure  was  so  great  that  he  resolved  to 
give  up  the  Hunterian  Lectures  at  the  College  of  Surgeons, 
as  he  had  already  given  up  the  FuUerian  Professorship  at 
the  Royal  Institution.  So  he  writes  to  Professor  (afterwards 
Sir  William)  Flower : — 

♦  Sec  p.  297. 


336  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiii 

Jermyn  Street,  yirii^  7,  1869. 

Private,  Confidential,  Particular. 

My  dear  Flower — I  have  written  to  Quain  *  to  tell  him  that 
I  do  not  propose  to  be  put  in  nomination  for  the  Hunterian  Chair 
this  year.  I  really  cannot  stand  it  with  the  British  Association 
hanging  over  my  head.  So  make  thy  shoulders  ready  for  the 
gown,  and  practise  the  goose-step  in  order  to  march  properly 
behind  the  mace,  and  I  will  come  and  hear  your  inaugural. — 
Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  meeting  of  the  Association  to  which  he  refers  took 
place  at  Exeter,  and  he  writes  of  it  to  Darwin  (September 

28):- 

As  usual,  your  abominable  heresies  were  the  means  of  get- 
ting me  into  all  sorts  of  hot  water  at  the  Association.  Three 
parsons  set  upon  you,  and  if  you  were  the  most  malicious  of 
men  you  could  not  have  wished  them  to  have  made  greater  fools 
of  themselves  than  they  did.  They  got  considerably  chaffed, 
and  that  was  all  they  were  worth.f 

And  to  Tyndall,  whom  an  accident  had  kept  in  Switzer- 
land : — 

After  a  sharp  fight  for  Edinburgh,  Liverpool  was  adopted 
as  the  place  of  meeting  for  the  Association  of  1870,  and  I  am 
to  be  President;  although  the  Times  says  that  my  best  friends 
tremble  for  me.  (I  hope  you  are  not  among  that  particular  lot 
of  my  best  friends.) 

I  think  we  shall  have  a  good  meeting,  and  you  know  you  are 
pledged  to  give  a  lecture  even  if  you  come  with  your  leg  in 
a  sling. 

The  foundation  of  the  Metaphysical  Society  in  1869  was 
not  without  interest  as  a  sign  of  the  times.  As  in  the  new 
birth  of  thought  which  put  a  period  to  the  Middle  Ages, 
so  in  the  Victorian  Renaissance,  a  vast  intellectual  ferment 
had  taken  immediate  shape  in  a  fierce  struggle  with  long 

♦  President  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons. 

t  It  is  perhaps  scarcely  worth  while  exhuming  these  long-forgotten 
arguments  in  their  entirety ;  but  anyone  curious  enough  to  consult 
the  report  of  the  meeting  preserved  in  the  files  of  the  Academy,  will 
find,  among  other  things,  an  entirely  novel  theory  as  to  the  relation 
of  the  Cherubim  to  terrestrial  creation. 


i869  THE   METAPHYSICAL  SOCIETY  337 

established  orthodoxy.  But  whereas  Luther  displaced 
Erasmus,  and  the  earlier  reformers  fought  out  the  quarrel 
with  the  weapons  of  the  theologian  rather  than  those  of  the 
Humanist,  the  latter-day  reformation  was  based  upon  the 
extension  of  the  domain  of  positive  science,  upon  the  force 
of  historical  criticism,  and  the  sudden  reorganisation  of  ac- 
cumulated knowledge  in  the  light  of  a  physical  theory 
adequate  to  explain  it 

These  new  facts  and  the  new  or  re-vivified  theories  based 
upon  them,  remained  to  be  reckoned  with  after  the  first 
storm  of  denunciation  had  passed  by,  and  the  meeting  at 
Sion  House  in  1867*  showed  that  some  at  least  of  the 
English  clergy  besides  Colenso  and  Stanley  wished  to  under- 
stand the  real  meaning  of  the  new  movement.  Although 
the  wider  effect  of  the  scientific  revival  in  modifying  theo- 
logical doctrine  was  not  yet  fully  apparent,  the  irreconcila- 
bles  grew  fewer  and  less  noisy,  while  the  injustice  of  their 
attempts  to  stifle  the  new  doctrine  and  to  ostracise  its  sup- 
porters became  more  glaring. 

Thus  among  the  supporters  of  the  old  order  of  thought, 
there  was  one  section  more  or  less  ready  to  learn  of  the 
new.  Another,  seeing  that  the  doctrines  of  which  they  were 
firmly  convinced  were  thrust  aside  by  the  rapid  advance 
of  the  new  school,  thought,  as  men  not  unnaturally  think 
in  the  like  situation,  that  the  latter  did  not  duly  weigh  what 
was  said  on  their  side.  Hence  this  section  eagerly  entered 
into  the  proposal  to  found  a  society  which  should  bring  to- 
gether men  of  diverse  views,  and  effect,  as  they  hoped,  by 
personal  discussion  of  the  great  questtions  at  issue,  in  the 
manner  and  with  the  machinery  of  the  learned  societies,  a 
rapprochement  unattainable  by  written  debate. 

The  scheme  was  first  propounded  by  Mr.  James  Knowles, 
then  editor  of  the  Contemporary  Review^  now  of  the  Nine- 
teenth Century,  in  conversation  with  Tennyson  and  Profess- 
or Pritchard  (Savilian  Professor  of  Astronomy  at  Oxford). 

Thus  the  Society  came  to  be  composed  of  men  of  the 
most  opposite  ways  of  thinking  and  of  very  various  occupa- 

♦  See  p.  325. 


338  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxni 

tions  in  life.  The  largest  group  was  that  of*  churchmen : — 
ecclesiastical  dignitaries  such  as  Thompson,  the  Archbishop 
of  York,  Ellicott,  Bishop  of  Gloucester  and  Bristol,  and 
Dean  Alford ;  staunch  laymen  such  as  Mr.  Gladstone,  Lord 
Selbome,  and  the  Duke  of  Argyll ;  while  the  liberal  school 
was  represented  by  Dean  Stanley,  F.  D.  Maurice,  and  Mark 
Pattison.  Three  distinguished  converts  from  the  English 
Church  championed  Roman  Catholic  doctrine — Cardinal 
Manning,  Father  Dalgaims,  and  W.  G.  Ward,  while  Uni- 
tarianism  claimed  Dr.  James  Martineau.  At  the  opposite 
pole,  in  antagonism  to  Christian  theology  and  theism  gener- 
ally, stood  Professor  W.  K.  Clifford,  whose  youthful  bril- 
liancy was  destined  to  be  cut  short  by  an  untimely  death. 
Positivism  was  represented  by  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison ;  and 
Agnosticism  by  such  men  of  science  or  letters  as  Huxley 
and  Tyndall,  Mr.  John  Morley,  and  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen. 

Something  was  gained,  too,  by  the  variety  Df  callings 
followed  by  the  different  members.  While  there  were  pro- 
fessional students  of  philosophy,  like  Prof.  Henry  Sidgwick 
or  Sir  Alexander  Grant,  the  Principal  of  Edinburgh  Univer- 
sity, in  some  the  technical  knowledge  of  philosophy  was 
overlaid  by  studies  in  history  or  letters;  in  others,  by  the 
practical  experience  of  the  law  or  politics ;  in  others,  again, 
medicine  or  biology  supplied  a  powerful  psychological  in- 
strument. This  fact  tended  to  keep  the  discussions  in  touch 
with  reality  on  many  sides. 

There  was  Tennyson,  for  instance,  the  only  poet  who 
thoroughly  understood  the  movement  of  modem  science,  a 
stately  but  silent  member;  Mr.  Ruskin,  J.  A.  Froude, 
Shadworth  Hodgson,  R.  H.  Hutton  of  the  Spectator,  James 
Hinton,  and  the  well-known  essayist,  W.  R.  Greg;  Sir 
James  Fitzjames  Stephen,  Sir  F.  Pollock,  Robert  Lowe 
(Lord  Sherbrooke),  Sir  M.  E.  Grant  Duff,  and  Lord  Arthur 
Russell ;  Sir  John  Lubbock,  Dr.  W.  B.  Carpenter,  Sir  Wil- 
liam Gull,  and  Sir  Andrew  Clark. 

Of  contemporary  thinkers  of  the  first  rank,  neither  John 
Stuart  Mill  nor  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  joined  the  society. 
The  letter  of  the  former  declining  the  invitation  to  join 
(given  in  the  Life  of  W.  G.  Ward,  p.  299)  is  extremely 


i869  THE   METAPHYSICAL  SOCIETY  339 

characteristic.  He  considers  the  object  of  the  projectors 
very  laudable,  "  but  it  is  very  doubtful  whether  it  will  be 
realised  in  practice."  The  undoubted  advantages  of  oral 
discussion  on  such  questions  are,  he  continues,  best  realised 
if  undertaken  in  the  manner  of  the  Socratic  dialogue,  be- 
tween one  and  one ;  but  less  so  in  a  mixed  assembly.  He 
therefore  did  not  think  himself  justified  in  joining  the  so- 
ciety at  the  expense  of  other  occupations  for  which  his  time 
was  already  engaged.  And  he  concludes  by  defending  him- 
self against  the  charge  of  not  paying  fair  attention  to  the 
arguments  of  his  opponents. 

It  followed  from  the  composition  of  the  society  that  the 
papers  read  were  less  commonly  upon  technical  questions  of 
metaphysics,  such  as  "  Matter  and  Force  "  or  "  The  Relation 
of  Will  to  Thought,"  than  upon  those  of  more  vivid  moral  or 
religious  interest,  such  as  "  What  is  Death  ?  "  "  The  Theory 
of  a  Soul,"  "  The  Ethics  of  Belief,"  or  "  Is  God  Unknow- 
able," in  which  wide  scope  was  given  to  the  emotions  as 
well  as  the  intellect  of  each  disputant. 

The  method  of  the  Society  was  for  the  paper  to  be 
printed  and  circulated  among  the  members  before  the 
meeting,  so  that  their  main  criticisms  were  ready  in  advance. 
The  discussions  took  place  after  a  dinner  at  which  many  of 
the  members  would  appear ;  and  if  the  more  formal  debates 
were  not  more  effectual  than  predicted  by  J.  S.  Mill,  the 
informal  discussions,  almost  conversations,  at  smaller  meet- 
ings, and  the  free  course  of  talk  at  the  dinner  table,  did 
something  to  realise  the  primary  objects  of  the  society. 
The  personal  rapprochement  took  place,  but  not  philosophic 
compromise  or  conversion.  Whether  or  not  the  tone 
adopted  after  this  period  by  the  clerical  party  at  large  was 
affected  by  the  better  understanding  on  the  part  of  their 
representatives  in  the  Metaphysical  Society  of  the  true  aims 
of  their  opponents  and  the  honest  and  substantial  difficulties 
which  stood  in  the  way  of  reunion,  it  is  true  that  the  violent 
denunciations  of  the  sixties  decreased  in  number  and  inten- 
sity; the  right  to  free  expression  of  reasoned  opinion  on 
serious  fact  was  tacitly  acknowledged;  and,  being  less 
attacked,  Huxley  himself  began  to  be  regarded  in  the  light 


340 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxiii 


of  a  teacher  rather  than  an  iconoclast.  The  question  began 
to  be  not  whether  such  opinions  are  wicked,  but  whether 
from  the  point  of  view  of  scientific  method  they  are  irre- 
fragably  true. 

The  net  philosophical  result  of  the  society's  work  was 
to  distinguish  the  essential  and  the  unessential  differences 
between  the  opposite  parties ;  the  latter  were  to  a  great  ex- 
tent cleared  up ;  but  the  former  remained  all  the  more  clearly 
defined  in  logical  nakedness  for  the  removal  of  the  side 
issues  and  the  personal  idiosyncrasies  which  often  obscured 
the  main  issues.  Indeed,  when  this  point  was  reached  by 
both  parties,  when  the  origins  and  consequences  of  the 
fundamental  principles  on  either  side  had  been  fully  dis- 
cussed and  mutual  misunderstandings  removed  to  the  ut- 
most, so  that  only  the  fundamentals  themselves  remained 
in  debate,  there  was  nothing  left  to  be  done.  The  so- 
ciety, in  fact,  as  Huxley  expressed  it,  "  died  of  too  much 
love." 

Indeed,  it  is  to  be  noticed  that,  despite  the  strong  an- 
tagonism of  principle  and  deductions  from  principle  which 
existed  among  the  members,  the  rule  of  mutual  toleration 
was  well  kept.  The  state  of  feeling  after  ten  years'  open 
struggle  seemed  likely  to  produce  active  collision  between 
representatives  of  the  opposing  schools  at  close  quarters. 
"  We  all  thought  it  would  be  a  case  of  Kilkenny  cats,"  said 
Huxley  many  years  afterwards.  "  Hats  and  coats  would  be 
left  in  the  hall,  but  there  would  be  no  owners  left  to  put 
them  on  again."  But  only  one  flash  of  the  sort  was  elicited. 
One  of  the  speakers  at  an  early  meeting  insisted  on  the 
necessity  of  avoiding  anything  like  moral  disapprobation 
in  the  debates.  There  was  a  pause ;  then  W.  G.  Ward  said : 
"  While  acquiescing  in  this  condition  as  a  general  rule,  I 
think  it  cannot  be  expected  that  Christian  thinkers  shall 
give  no  sign  of  the  horror  with  which  they  would  view 
the  spread  of  such  extreme  opinions  as  those  advocated 
by  Mr.  Huxley."  Another  pause ;  then  Huxley,  thus  chal- 
lenged, replied:  "As  Dr.  Ward  has  spoken,  I  must  in 
fairness  say  that  it  will  be  very  difficult  for  me  to  con- 
ceal my  feeling  as  to  the  intellectual  degradation 


i869  THE   METAPHYSICAL  SOCIETY  341 

would  come  of  the  general  acceptance  of  such  views  as 
Dr.  Ward  holds."  * 

No  amount  of  argument  could  have  been  more  effectual 
in  supporting  the  claim  for  mutual  toleration  than  these  two 
speeches,  and  thenceforward  such  forms  of  criticism  were 
conspicuous  by  their  absence.  And  where  honesty  of  con- 
viction was  patent,  mutual  toleration  was  often  replaced  by 
personal  esteem  and  regard.  "  Charity,  brotherly  love," 
writes  Huxley,  "  were  the  chief  traits  of  the  Society.  We  all 
expended  so  much  charity,  that,  had  it  been  money,  we 
should  every  one  have  been  bankrupt." 

The  special  part  played  in  the  society  by  Huxley  was  to 
show  that  many  of  the  axioms  of  current  speculation  are  far 
from  being  axiomatic,  and  that  dogmatic  assertion  on  some 
of  the  cardinal  points  of  metaphysic  is  unwarranted  by  the 
evidence  of  fact.  To  find  these  seeming  axioms  set  aside 
as  unproven,  was,  it  appears  from  his  Life,  disconcerting  to 
such  members  of  the  society  as  Cardinal  Manning,  whose 
arguments  depended  on  the  unquestioned  acceptance  of 
them.  It  was  no  doubt  the  observation  of  a  similar  attitude 
of  mind  in  Mr.  Gladstone  towards  metaphysical  problems 
which  provoked  Huxley  to  reply,  when  asked  whether  Mr. 
Gladstone  was  an  expert  metaphysician — "An  expert  in 
metaphysics  ?    He  docs  not  know  the  meaning  of  the  word." 

In  addition  to  his  share  in  the  discussions,  Huxley  con- 
tributed three  papers  to  the  society.  The  first,  read  Novem- 
ber 17,  1869,  was  on  "  The  views  of  Hume,  Kant,  and 
Whately  on  the  logical  basis  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Immor- 
tality of  the  Soul,"  showing  that  these  thinkers  agreed  in 
holding  that  no  such  basis  is  given  by  reasoning,  apart,  for 
instance,  from  revelation.  A  summary  of  the  argument 
appears  in  the  essay  on  Hume  {CoU,  Ess,  vi.  201,  sq.). 

On  November  8,  1870,  he  read  a  paper,  "  Has  a  Frog 
a  Soul  ?  and  if  so,  of  what  Nature  is  that  Soul  ?  "  Experi- 
ment shows  that  a  frog  deprived  of  consciousness  and 
volition  by  the  removal  of  the  front  part  of  its  brain,  will, 
under  the  action  of  various  stimuli,  perform  many  acts 

♦  Zifi  of  W.  G,  Ward,  by  Wilfrid  Ward,  p.  309. 


342  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxni 

which  can  only  be  called  purposive,  such  as  moving  to 
recover  its  balance  when  the  board  on  which  it  stands  is 
inclined,  or  scratching  where  it  is  made  uncomfortable,  or 
croaking  when  pressed  in  a  particular  spot  If  its  spinal 
cord  be  severed,  the  lower  limbs,  disconnected  from  the 
brain,  will  also  perform  actions  of  this  kind.  The  question 
arises,  Is  the  frog  entirely  a  soulless  automaton,  performing 
all  its  actions  directly  in  response  to  external  stimuli,  only 
more  perfectly  and  with  more  delicate  adjustment  when  its 
brain  remains  intact,  or  is  its  soul  distributed  along  its 
spinal  marrow,  so  that  it  can  be  divided  into  two  parts  inde- 
pendent of  one  another? 

The  professed  metaphysician  might  perhaps  tend  to 
regard  such  consideration  as  irrelevant ;  but  if  the  starting- 
point  of  metaphysics  is  to  be  found  in  psychology,  psychol- 
ogy itself  depends  to  no  small  extent  upon  physiology. 
This  question,  however,  Huxley  did  not  pretend  to  solve. 
In  the  existing  state  of  knowledge  he  believed  it  to  be  in- 
soluble. But  he  thought  it  was  not  without  its  bearing 
upon  the  supposed  relations  of  soul  and  body  in  the  human 
subject,  and  should  serve  to  give  pause  to  current  theories 
on  the  matter. 

His  third  paper,  read  January  ii,  1876,  was  on  the 
"  Evidence  of  the  Miracle  of  the  Resurrection,"  in  which  he 
argued  that  there  was  no  valid  evidence  of  actual  death 
having  taken  place.  His  rejection  of  the  miraculous  had 
led  to  an  invitation  from  some  of  his  opponents  in  the 
society  to  write  a  paper  on  a  definite  miracle,  and  explain 
his  reasons  for  not  accepting  it  His  choice  of  subject  was 
due  to  two  reasons:  firstly,  it  was  a  cardinal  instance; 
t  secondly,  it  was  a  miracle  not  worked  by  Christ  Himself, 
and  therefore  a  discussion  of  its  genuineness  could  offer  no 
suggestion  of  personal  fraud,  and  hence  would  avoid  in- 
flicting g^tuitous  pain  upon  believers  in  it. 

This  certainty  that  there  exist  many  questions  at  present 
insoluble,  upon  which  it  is  intellectually,  and  indeed  morally 
wrong  to  assert  that  we  have  real  knowledge,  had  long  been 
with  him,  but,  although  he  had  earned  abundant  odium  by 
openly  resisting  the  claims  of  dogmatic  authority,  he  had 


i869  THE  NAME  AGNOSTIC  343 

not  been  compelled  to  define  his  philosophical  position  until 
he  entered  the  Metaphysical  Society.  How  he  came  to 
enrich  the  English  language  with  the  name  "  Agnostic  "  is 
explained  in  his  article  "Agnosticism"  (Coll.  Ess.  v.  pp. 

237-239).  .  ^  .       t..         .   . 

After  describing   how   it   came  about  that   his   mind 

"  steadily  gravitated  towards  the  conclusions  of  Hume  and 

Kant,"  so  well  stated  by  the  latter  as  follows : — 

The  greatest  and  perhaps  the  sole  use  of  all  philosophy  of 
pure  reason  is,  after  all,  merely  negative,  since  it  serves  not  as 
an  organon  for  the  enlargement  (of  knowledge),  but  as  a  dis- 
cipline for  its  delimitation;  and,  instead  of  discovering  truth, 
has  only  the  modest  merit  of  preventing  error : — 

he  proceeds — 

When  I  reached  intellectual  maturity,  and  began  to  ask 
myself  whether  I  was  an  atheist,  a  theist,  or  a  pantheist ;  a  ma- 
terialist or  an  idealist;  a  Christian  or  a  freethinker;  I  found 
that  the  more  I  learned  and  reflected,  the  less  ready  was  the 
answer;  until,  at  last,  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that  I  had 
neither  art  nor  part  with  any  of  these  denominations,  except  the 
last  The  one  thing  in  which  most  of  these  good  people  were 
agreed  was  the  one  thing  in  which  I  differed  from  them.  They 
were  quite  sure  they  had  attained  a  certain  "gnosis" — had, 
more  or  less  successfully,  solved  the  problem  of  existence ;  while 
I  was  quite  sure  I  had  not,  and  had  a  pretty  strong  conviction 
that  the  problem  was  insoluble.  And,  witji  Hume  and  Kant 
on  my  side,  I  could  not  think  myself  presumptuous  in  holding 
fast  by  that  opinion.  .  .  . 

This  was  my  situation  when  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  find  a 
place  among  the  members  of  that  remarkable  confraternity  of 
antagonists,  long  since  deceased,  but  of  green  and  pious  memory, 
the  Metaphysical  Society.  Every  variety  of  philosophical  and 
theological  opinion  was  represented  there,  and  expressed  itself 
with  entire  openness;  most  of  my  colleagues  were  -ists  of  one 
sort  or  another;  and,  however  kind  and  friendly  they  might  be, 
I,  the  man  without  a  rag  of  a  label  to  cover  himself  with,  could 
not  fail  to  have  some  of  the  uneasy  feelings  which  must  have 
beset  the  historical  fox  when,  after  leaving  the  trap  in  which 
his  tail  remained,  he  presented  himself  to  his  normally  elongated 
companions.  So  I  took  thought,  and  invented  what  I  conceived 
23 


344  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiii 

to  be  the  appropriate  title  of  "agnostic."  It  came  into  my 
head  as  suggestively  antithetic  to  the  "  gnostic  "  of  Church  his- 
tory, who  professed  to  know  so  much  about  the  very  things  of 
which  I  was  ignorant;  and  I  took  the  earliest  opportunity  of 
parading  it  at  our  Society,  to  show  that  I,  too,  had  9  tail,  like 
the  other  foxes.  To  my  great  satisfaction,  the  term  took;  and 
when  the  Spectator  had  stood  godfather  to  it,  any  suspicion  in 
the  minds  of  respectable  people  that  a  knowledge  of  its  parent- 
age might  have  awakened  was,  of  course,  completely  lulled. 

As  for  the  dialectical  powers  he  displayed  in  the  de- 
bates, it  was  generally  acknowledged  that  in  this,  as  well 
as  in  the  power  of  conducting  a  debate,  he  shared  the  pre- 
eminence with  W.  G.  Ward.  Indeed,  a  proposal  was  made 
that  the  perpetual  presidency  in  alternate  years  should  be 
vested  in  these  two;  but  time  and  health  forbade. 

His  part  in  the  debates  is  thus  described  in  a  letter  to 
me  from  Professor  Henry  Sidgwick : — 

Dear  Mr.  Huxley — I  became  a  member  of  the  Metaphysical 
Society,  I  think,  at  its  first  meeting  in  1869;  ^^^*  though  my 
engagements  in  Cambridge  did  not  allow  me  to  attend  regularly, 
I  retain  a  very  distinct  recollection  of  the  part  taken  by  your 
father  in  the  debates  at  which  we  were  present  together.  There 
were  several  members  of  the  Society  with  whose  philosophical 
views  I  had,  on  the  whole,  more  sympathy;  but  there  was  cer- 
tainly no  one  to  whom  I  found  it  more  pleasant  and  more  in- 
structive to  listen.  Indeed  I  soon  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
there  was  only  one  other  member  of  our  Society  who  could 
be  placed  on  a  par  with  him  as  a  debater,  on  the  subjects  dis- 
cussed at  our  meetings ;  and  that  was,  curiously  enough,  a  man 
of  the  most  diametrically  opposite  opinions — W.  G.  Ward,  the 
well-known  advocate  of  Ultramontanism.  Ward  was  by  train- 
ing, and  perhaps  by  nature,  more  of  a  dialectician;  but  your 
father  was  unrivalled  in  the  clearness,  precision,  succinctness, 
and  point  of  his  statements,  in  his  complete  and  ready  grasp 
of  his  own  system  of  philosophical  thought,  and  the  quickness 
and  versatility  with  which  his  thought  at  once  assumed  the  right 
attitude  of  defence  against  any  argument  coming  from  any 
quarter.  I  used  to  think  that  while  others  of  us  could  perhaps 
find,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  an  answer  more  or  less  eflFective 
to  some  unexpected  attack,  your  father  seemed  always  able  to 
find  the  answer — I  mean  the  answer  that  it  was  reasonable  to 


i869  THE   METAPHYSICAL  SOCIETY  345 

give,  consistently  with  his  general  view,  and  much  the  same 
answer  that  he  would  have  given  if  he  had  been  allowed  the 
fullest  time  for  deliberation. 

The  general  tone  of  the  Metaphysical  Society  was  one  of 
extreme  consideration  for  the  feelings  of  opponents,  and  your 
father's  speaking  formed  no  exception  to  the  general  harmony. 
At  the  same  time  I  seem  to  remember  him  as  the  most  com- 
bative of  all  the  speakers  who  took  a  leading  part  in  the  debates. 
His  habit  of  never  wasting  words,  and  the  edge  naturally  given 
to  his  remarks  by  his  genius  for  clear  and  effective  statement, 
partly  account  for  this  impression;  still  I  used  to  think  that  he 
liked  fighting,  and  occasionally  liked  to  give  play  to  his  sarcastic 
humour — ^though  always  strictly  within  the  limits  imposed  by 
courtesy.  I  remember  that  on  one  occasion  when  I  had  read  to 
the  Society  an  essay  on  the  "  Incoherence  of  Empiricism,"  I 
looked  forward  with  some  little  anxiety  to  his  criticisms;  and 
when  they  came,  I  felt  that  my  anxiety  had  not  been  superfluous ; 
he  "  went  for  "  the  weak  points  of  my  argument  in  half  a  dozen 
trenchant  sentences,  of  which  I  shall  not  forget  the  impression. 
It  was  hard  hitting,  though  perfectly  courteous  and  fair. 

I  wish  I  could  remember  what  he  said,  but  the  memory  of  all 
the  words  uttered  in  these  debates  has  now  vanished  from  my 
mind,  though  I  recall  vividly  the  general  impression  that  I  have 
tried  briefly  to  put  down. — Believe  me,  yours  very  truly, 

Henry  Sidgwick. 


CHAPTER   XXIV 
1870 

With  the  year  1870  comes  another  turning-point  in 
Huxley's  career.  From  his  return  to  England  in  1850  till 
1854  he  had  endured  four  years  of  hard  struggle,  of  hope 
deferred ;  his  reputation  as  a  zoologist  had  been  established 
before  his  arrival,  and  was  more  than  confirmed  by  his 
personal  energy  and  power.  When  at  length  settled  in  the 
professorship  at  Jermyn  Street,  he  was  so  far  from  thinking 
himself  more  than  a  beginner  who  had  learned  to  work  in 
one  comer  of  the  field  of  knowledge,  still  needing  deep 
research  into  all  kindred  subjects  in  order  to  know  the  true 
bearings  of  his  own  little  portion,  that  he  treated  the  next 
six  years  simply  as  years  of  further  apprenticeship.  Under 
the  suggestive  power  of  the  Origin  of  Species  all  these  scat- 
tered studies  fell  suddenly  into  due  rank  and  order;  the 
philosophic  unity  he  had  so  long  been  seeking  inspired  his 
thought  with  tenfold  vigour,  and  the  battle  at  Oxford  in 
defence  of  the  new  h)rpothesis  first  brought  him  before  the 
public  eye  as  one  who  not  only  had  the  courage  of  his  con- 
victions when  attacked,  but  could,  and  more,  would,  carry 
the  war  effectively  into  the  enemy's  country.  And  for  the 
next  ten  years  he  was  commonly  identified  with  the  cham- 
pionship of  the  most  unpopular  view  of  the  time ;  a  fighter, 
an  assailant  of  long-established  fallacies,  he  was  too  often 
considered  a  mere  iconoclast,  a  subverter  of  every  other 
well-rooted  institution,  theological,  educational,  or  moral. 

It  is  difficult  now  to  realise  with  what  feelings  he  was 
regarded  in  the  average  respectable  household  in  the  sixties 
and  early  seventies.  His  name  was  anathema;  he  was  a 
346 


i870  LAY  SERMONS  347 

terrible  example  of  intellectual  pravity  beyond  redemption,  a 
man  with  opinions  such  as  cannot  be  held  "  without  grave 
personal  sin  on  his  part "  (as  was  once  said  of  Mill  by  W. 
G.  Ward,  see  p.  451),  the  representative  in  his  single  person 
of  rationalism,  materialism,  atheism,  or  if  there  be  any  more 
abhorrent  "ism" — in  token  of  which  as  late  as  1892  an 
absurd  zealot  at  the  headquarters  of  the  Salvation  Army 
crowned  an  abusive  letter  to  him  at  Eastbourne  by  the 
statement,  "  I  hear  you  have  a  local  reputation  as  a  Brad- 
laughite." 

But  now  official  life  began  to  lay  closer  hold  upon  him. 
He  came  forward  also  as  a  leader  in  the  struggle  for  edu- 
cational reform,  seeking  not  only  to  perfect  his  own  bio- 
logical teaching,  but  to  show,  in  theory  and  practice,  how 
scientific  training  might  be  introduced  into  the  general  sys- 
tem of  education.  He  was  more  than  once  asked  to  stand 
for  Parliament,  but  refused,  thinking  he  could  do  more 
useful  work  for  his  country  outside. 

The  publication  in  1870  of  Lay  Sermons ^  the  first  of  a 
series  of  similar  volumes,  served,  by  concentrating  his  moral 
and  intellectual  philosophy,  to  make  his  influence  as  a 
teacher  of  men  more  widely  felt.  The  "  active  scepticism," 
whose  conclusions  many  feared,  was  yet  acknowledged  as 
the  quality  of  mind  which  had  made  him  one  of  the  clearest 
thinkers  and  safest  scientific  guides  of  his  time,  while  his 
keen  sense  of  right  and  wrong  made  the  more  reflective  of 
those  who  opposed  his  conclusions  hesitate  long  before  ex- 
pressing a  doubt  as  to  the  good  influence  of  his  writings. 
This  view  is  very  clearly  expressed  in  a  review  of  the  book 
in  the  Nation  (New  York,  1870,  xi.  407). 

And  as  another  review  of  the  Lay  Sermons  puts  it 
{Nature,  iii.  22),  he  began  to  be  made  a  kind  of  popular 
oracle,  yet  refused  to  prophesy  smooth  things. 

During  the  earlier  period,  with  more  public  demands 
made  upon  him  than  upon  most  men  of  science  of  his  age 
and  standing,  with  the  burden  of  four  Royal  Commissions 
and  increasing  work  in  learned  societies  in  addition  to  his 
regular  lecturing  and  official  paleontological  work,  and  the 
many  addresses  and  discourses  in  which  he  spread  abroad  in 


348  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

the  popular  mind  the  leaven  of  new  ideas  upon  nature  and 
education-  and  the  progress  of  thought,  he  was  still  con- 
stantly at  work  on  biological  researches  of  his  own,  many 
of  which  took  shape  in  the  Hunterian  lectures  at  the  College 
of  Surgeons  from  1863-1870.  But  from  1870  onward,  the 
time  he  would  spare  to  such  research  grew  less  and  less. 
For  eight  years  he  was  continuously  on  one  Koyal  Com- 
mission after  another.  His  administrative  work  on  learned 
societies  continued  to  increase;  in  1869-70  he  held  the 
presidency  of  the  Ethnological  Society,  with  a  view  to 
effecting  the  amalgamation  with  the  Anthropological,  "  the 
plan,"  as  he  calls  it,  "  for  uniting  the  Societies  which  occupy 
themselves  with  man  (that  excludes  "  Society  "  which  occu- 
pies itself  chiefly  with  woman)."  He  became  president  of 
the  Geological  Society  in  1872,  and  for  nearly  ten  years, 
from  1871  to  1880,  he  was  secretary  of  the  Royal  Society, 
an  office  which  occupied  no  small  portion  of  his  time  and 
thought,  "  for  he  had  formed  a  very  high  ideal  of  the  duties 
of  the  Society  as  the  head  of  science  in  this  country,  and 
was  determined  that  it  should  not  at  least  fall  short  through 
any  lack  of  exertion  on  his  part "  (Sir  M.  Foster,  R.  S. 
Obit.  Not.).* 

The  year  1870  itself  was  one  of  the  busiest  he  had  ever 
known.  He  published  one  biological  and  four  paleonto- 
logical  memoirs,  and  sat  on  two  Royal  Commissions,  one 
on  the  Contagious  Diseases  Acts,  the  other  on  Scientific 
Instruction,  which  continued  until  1875. 

The  three  addresses  which  he  gave  in  the  autumn,  and 
his  election  to  the  School  Board  will  be  spoken  of  later ;  in 
the  first  part  of  the  year  he  read  two  papers  at  the  Ethno- 
logical Society,  of  which  he  .was  president,  on  "  The  Geo- 
graphical Distribution  of  the  Chief  Modifications  of  Man- 
kind," March  9 — ^and  on  "  The  Ethnology  of  Britain,"  May 
10 — ^the  substance  of  which  appeared  in  the  Contemporary 
Review  for  July  under  the  title  of  "  Some  Fixed  Points  in 
British  Ethnology  "  (Coll.  Ess.  vii.  253).  As  president  also 
of  the  Geological  Society  and  of  the  British  Association, 

♦  See  Appendix  II. 


i870  THE  CELT  QUESTION  349 

he  had  two  important  addresses  to  deliver.  In  addition  to 
this,  he  delivered  an  address  before  the  Y.M.C.A.  at  Cam- 
bridge on  "  Descartes'  Discourse." 

How  busy  he  was  may  be  gathered  from  his  refusal  of 
an  invitation  to  Down : — 

26  Abbey  Place. /a».  21,  1870. 

My  dear  Darwin — It  is  hard  to  resist  an  invitation  of  yours 
— ^but  I  dine  out  on  Saturday ;  and  next  week  three  evenings  are 
abolished  by  Societies  of  one  kind  or  another.  And  there  is 
that  horrid  Geological  address  looming  in  the  future  I 

I  am  afraid  I  must  deny  myself  at  present. 

I  am  glad  you  liked  the  sermon.  Did  you  see  the  "  Devon- 
shire man's  "  attack  in  the  Pall  MdUT 

I  have  been  wasting  my  time  in  polishing  that  worthy  off.  I 
would  not  have  troubled  myself  about  him,  if  it  were  not  for  the 
political  bearing  of  the  Celt  question  just  now. 

My  wife  sends  her  love  to  all  you. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  reference  to  the  "  Devonshire  Man  "  is  as  follows : — 
Huxley  had  been  speaking  of  the  strong  similarity  between 
Gaul  and  German,  Celt  and  Teuton,  before  the  change  of 
character  brought  about  by  the  Latin  conquest ;  and  of  the 
similar  commixture,  a  dash  of  Anglo-Saxon  in  the  mass  of 
Celtic,  which  prevailed  in  our  western  borders  and  many 
parts  of  Ireland,  e.g.  Tipperary. 

The  "  Devonshire  Man  "  wrote  on  Jan.  18  to  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette,  objecting  to  the  statement  that  "  Devonshire 
men  are  as  little  Anglo-Saxons  as  Northumbrians  are 
Welsh."  Huxley  replied  on  the  21st,  meeting  his  historical 
arguments  with  citations  from  Freeman,  and  especially  by 
completing  his  opponent's  quotation  from  Caesar,  to  show 
that  under  certain  conditions,  the  Gaul  was  indistinguishable 
from  the  German.  The  assertion  that  the  Anglo-Saxon 
character  is  midway  between  the  pure  French  or  Irish  and 
the  Teutonic,  he  met  with  the  previous  question,  "  Who  is 
the  pure  Frenchman  ?  Picard,  Provencal,  or  Breton  ?  or  the 
pure  Irish?  Milesian,  Firbolg,  or  Cruithneach ? " 

But  the  "  Devonshire  Man  "  did  not  confine  himself  to 
science.    He  indulged  in  various  personalities,  to  the  smart- 


350 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 


est  of  which,  a  parody  of  Sydney  Smith's  dictum  on  Dr. 
Whewell,  Huxley  replied : — 

"  A- Devonshire  Man"  is  good  enough  to  say  of  me  that 
''cutting  up  monkeys  is  his  forte,  and  cutting  up  men  is  his 
foible."  With  your  permission,  I  propose  to  cut  up  "  A  Devon- 
shire Man  " ;  but  I  leave  it  to  the  public  to  judge  whether,  when 
so  employed,  my  occupation  is  to  be  referred  to  the  former  or 
to  the  latter  category. 

For  this  he  was  roundly  lectured  by  the  Spectator  on 
January  29,  in  an  article  under  the  heading  "  Pope  Huxley." 
Regardless  of  the  rights  or  wrongs  of  the  controversy,  he 
was  chidden  for  the  abusive  language  of  the  above  para- 
graph, and  told  that  he  was  a  very  good  anatomist,  but  had 
better  not  enter  into  discussions  on  other  subjects. 

The  same  question  is  developed  in  the  address  to  the 
Ethnological  Society  later  in  the  year  and  in  "  Some  Fixed 
Points  in  British  Ethnology  "  (Contemporary  Review,  1871), 
and  reiterated  in  an  address  from  the  chair  in  Section  D 
at  the  British  Association  in  1878  at  Dublin,  and  in  a  letter 
to  the  Times  for  October  12,  1887,  apropos  of  a  leading 
article  upon  "  British  Race-types  of  To-day." 

Letter-writing  was  difficult  under  such  pressure  of  work, 
but  the  claims  of  absent  friends  were  not  wholly  forgotten, 
though  left  on  one  side  for  a  time,  and  the  warm-hearted 
Dohm,  who  could  not  bear  to  think  himself  forgotten,  man- 
aged to  get  a  letter  out  of  him — ^not  on  scientific  business. 

26  Abbey  Place, /an.  30,  1870. 

My  dear  Dohrn — In  one  sense  I  deserve  all  the  hard  things 
you  may  have  said  and  thought  about  me,  for  it  is  really  scandal- 
ous and  indefensible  that  I  have  not  written  to  you.  But  in 
another  sense,  I  do  not,  for  I  have  very  often  thought  about  you 
and  your  doings,  and  as  I  have  told  you  once  before,  your 
memory  always  remains  green  in  the  "  happy  family." 

But  what  between  the  incessant  pressure  of  work  and  an 
inborn  aversion  to  letter-writing,  I  become  a  worse  and  worse 
correspondent  the  longer  I  live,  and  unless  I  can  find  one  or 
two  friends  who  will  [be]  content  to  bear  with  my  infirmities 
and  believe  that  however  long  before  we  meet,  I  shall  be  ready 
to  take  them  up  again  exactly  where  I  left  off,  I  shall  be  a 
friendless  old  man. 


i870  PALEONTOLOGY  AND   EVOLUTION  351 

As  for  your  old  Goethe,  you  are  mistaken.  The  Scripture 
says  that  "  a  living  dog  is  better  than  a  dead  lion,"  and  I  am  a 
living  dog.  By  the  way  I  bought  Cotta's  edition  of  him  the 
other  day,  and  there  he  stands  on  my  bookcase  in  all  the  glory  of 
gilt,  black,  and  marble  edges.  Do  you  know  I  did  a  version  of  his 
Aphorisms  on  Nature  into  English  the  other  day.*  It  astonishes 
the  British  Philistines  not  a  little.  When  they  began  to  read  it 
they  thought  it  was  mine,  and  that  I  had  suddenly  gone  mad !  ' 

But  to  return  to  your  aflFairs  instead  of  my  own.  I  received 
your  volume  on  the  Arthropods  the  other  day,  but  I  shall  not  be 
able  to  look  at  it  for  the  next  three  weeks,  as  I  am  in  the  midst  of 
my  lectures,  and  have  an  annual  address  to  deliver  to  the  Geo- 
logical Society  on  the  i8th  February,  when,  I  am  happy  to  say, 
my  tenure  of  office  as  President  expires. 

After  that  I  shall  be  only  too  glad  to  plunge  into  your  doings 
and,  as  always,  I  shall  follow  your  work  with  the  heartiest  in- 
terest But  I  wish  you  would  not  take  it  into  your  head  that 
Darwin  or  I,  or  anyone  else  thinks  otherwise  than  high|^  of 
you,  or  that  you  need  "  re-establishing  "  in  any  one's  eyes.  But 
I  hope  you  will  not  have  finished  your  work  before  the  autumn, 
as  they  have  made  me  President  of  the  British  Association  this 
year,  and  I  shall  be  very  busy  with  my  address  in  the  summer. 
The  meeting  is  to  take  place  in  Liverpool  on  the  14th  September, 
and  I  live  in  hope  that  you  will  be  able  to  come  over.  Let  me 
know  if  you  can,  that  I  may  secure  you  good  quarters. 

I  shall  ask  the  wife  to  fill  up  the  next  half  sheet.  But  for 
Heaven's  sake  don't  be  angry  with  me  in  English  again.  It's 
far  worse  than  a  scolding  in  Deutsch,  and  I  have  as  little  for- 
gotten my  German  as  I  have  my  German  friends. 

On  February  18  he  delivered  his  farewell  address  f  to  the 
Geological  Society,  on  laying  down  the  office  of  President. 
He  took  the  opportunity  to  revise  his  address  to  the  society 
in  1862,  and  pointed  out  the  growth  of  evidence  in  favour 
of  the  evolution  theory,  and  in  particular  traced  the  paleon- 
tological  history  of  the  horse,  through  a  series  of  fossil  types 
approaching  more  and  more  to  a  generalised  ungulate  type 
and  reaching  back  to  a  three-toed  ancestor,  or  collateral  of 
such  an  ancestor,  itself  possessing  rudiments  of  the  two  other 
toes  which  appertain  to  the  average  quadruped. 

♦  For  the  first  number  of  Nature^  November  1869. 

t  **  Paleontology  and  the  Doctrine  of  Evolution,"  ColL  Ess.  viil. 


352 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 


If  (he  said)  the  expectation  raised  by  the  splints  of  the 
horses  that,  in  some  ancestor  of  the  horses,  these  splints  would 
be  found  to  be  complete  digits,  has  been  verified,  we  are  fur- 
nished with  very  strong  reasons  for  looking  for  a  no  less  com- 
plete verification  of  the  expectation  that  the  three-toed  Plagio- 
lophus-likc  "avus"  of  the  horse  must  have  been  a  five-toed 
"  atavus  "  at  some  early  period. 

Six  years  afterwards,  this  forecast  of  paleontological  re-» 
search  was  to  be  fulfilled,  but  at  the  expense  of  the  European 
ancestry  of  the  horse.  A  series  of  ancestors,  similar  to  these 
European  fossils,  but  still  more  equine,  and  extending  in 
unbroken  order  much  farther  back  in  geological  time,  was 
discovered  in  America.  His  use  of  this  in  his  New  York 
lectures  as  demonstrative  evidence  of  evolution,  and  the  im- 
mediate fulfilment  of  a  further  prophecy  of  his  will  be  told 
in  due  course. 

His  address  to  the  Cambridge  Y.M.C.A.,  "  A  Commen- 
tary on  Descartes'  *  Discourse  touching  the  method  of  using 
reason  rightly,  and  of  seeking  scientific  truth,' "  was  deliv- 
ered on  March  24.  This  was  an  attempt  to  g^ve  this  dis- 
tinctively Christian  audience  some  vision  of  the  world  of 
science  and  philosophy,  which  is  neither  Christian  nor  Un- 
christian, but  Extra-christian,  and  to  show  "  by  what  meth- 
ods the  dwellers  therein  try  to  distinguish  truth  from  false- 
hood, in  regard  to  some  of  the  deepest  and  most  difficult 
problems  that  beset  humanity,  "  in  order  to  be  clear  about 
the  actions,  and  to  walk  sure-footedly  in  this  life,"  as  Des- 
cartes says.  For  Descartes  had  laid  the  foundation  of  his 
own  guiding  principle  of  "  active  scepticism,  which  strives 
to  conquer  itself." 

Here  again,  as  in  the  Physical  Basis  of  Life,  but  with 
more  detail,  he  explains  how  far  materialism  is  legfitimate, 
is,  in  fact,  a  sort  of  shorthand  idealism.  This  essay,  too, 
contains  the  often-quoted  passage,  apropos  of  the  "  intro- 
duction of  Calvinism  into  science." 

I  protest  that  if  some  great  Power  would  agree  to  make  me 
always  think  what  is  true  and  do  what  is  right,  on  condition  of 
being  turned  into  a  sort  of  clock  and  wound  up  every  morning 
before  I  got  out  of  bed,  I  should  instantly  close  with  the  offer. 


i870  ST.  PAUL  AND  PROTESTANTISM  353 

The  only  freedom  I  care  about  is  the  freedom  to  do  right;  the 
freedom  to  do  wrong  I  am  ready  to  part  with  on  the  cheapest 
terms  to  any  one  who  will  take  it  of  me. 

This  was  the  latest  of  the  essays  included  in  Lay  Ser- 
mons, Addresses  and  Reviews,  which  came  out,  with  a  dedi- 
catory letter  to  Tyndall,  in  the  summer  of  1870,  and,  whether 
on  account  of  its  subject  matter  or  its  title,  always  remained 
his  most  popular  volume  of  essays. 

To  the  same  period  belongs  a  letter  to  Matthew  Arnold 
about  his  book  St.  Paul  and  Protestantism. 

My  dear  Arnold— Many  thanks  for  your  book  which  I  have 
been  diving  into  at  odd  times  as  leisure  served,  and  picking  up 
many  good  things. 

One  of  the  best  is  what  you  say  near  the  end  about  science 
gradually  conquering  the  materialism  of  popular  religion. 

It  will  startle  the  Puritans  who  always  coolly  put  the  matter 
the  other  way;  but  it  is  profoundly  true. 

These  people  are  for  the  most  part  mere  idolaters  with  a 
Bible- fetish,  who  urgently  stand  in  need  of  conversion. by  Extra- 
christian  Missionaries. 

It  takes  all  one's  practical  experience  of  the  importance  of 
Puritan  ways  of  thinking  to  overcome  one's  feeling  of  the  un- 
reality of  their  beliefs.  I  had  pretty  well  forgotten  how  real  to 
them  "  the  man  in  the  next  street "  is,  till  your  citation  of  their 
horribly  absurd  dogmas  reminded  me  of  it.  If  you  can  persuade 
them  that  Paul  is  fairly  interpretable  in  your  sense,  it  may  be 
the  beginning  of  better  things,  but  I  have  my  doubts  if  Paul 
would  own  you,  if  he  could  return  to  expound  his  own  epistles. 

I  am  glad  you  like  my  Descartes  article.  My  business  with 
my  scientific  friends  is  something  like  yours  with  the  Puritans, 
nature  being  our  Paul. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 
26  Abbey  Place,  May  10,  1870. 

From  the  14th  to  the  24th  of  April  Huxley,  accom- 
panied by  his  friend  Hooker,  made  a  trip  to  the  Eifel 
country.  His  sketch-book  is  full  of  rapid  sketches  of  the 
country,  many  of  them  geological ;  one  day  indeed  there  are 
eight,  another  nine  such. 

Tyndall  was  invited  to  join  the  party,  and  at  first  ac- 
cepted, but  then  recollected  the  preliminaries  which  had  to 


354 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 


be  carried  out  before  his  lectures  on  electricity  at  the  end 
of  the  month.    So  he  writes  on  April  6 : — 

Royal  Institution,  6  ApriL 

My  dear  Huxley — I  was  rendered  drunk  by  the  excess  of 
prospective  pleasure  when  you  mentioned  the  Eifel  yesterday, 
and  took  no  account  of  my  lectures.  They  begin  on  the  28th, 
and  I  have  studiously  to  this  hour  excluded  them  from  my 
thought.  I  have  made  arrangements  to  see  various  experiments 
involving  the  practical  application  of  electricity  before  the  lec- 
tures begin ;  I  find  myself,  in  short,  cut  off  from  the  expedition. 
My  regret  on  this  score  is  commensurable  with  the  pleasures  I 
promised  myself.    Confound  the  lectures ! 

And  yours  *  on  Friday  is  creating  a  pretty  hubbub  already. 
I  am  torn  to  pieces  by  women  in  search  of  tickets.  Anything 
that  touches  progenitorship  interests  them.  You  will  have  a 
crammed  house  I  doubt  not. — Yours  ever, 

John  Tyndall. 

Huxley  replied : — 

Geological  Survey  of  England  and  Wales, 
April  6,  1870. 
My  dear  Tyndall — 
DAMN 

the 
L 
e 
c 
t 
u 
r 
e 

s.  T.  H.  H. 

That's  a  practical  application  of  electricity  for  you. 

In  June  he  writes  to  his  wife,  who  had  taken  a  sick 
child  to  the  seaside: — 

I  hear  a  curious  rumour  (which  is  not  for  circulation),  that 
Froude  and  I  have  been  proposed  for  D.C.L.'s  at  Commemora- 
tion, and  that  the  proposition  has  been  bitterly  and  strongly 
opposed  by  Pusey.f    They  say  there  has  been  a  regular  row  in 

*  On  the  Pedigree  of  the  Horse,  April  8,   1870.   which  was   never 
brought  out  in  book  form. 

t  Huxley  ultimately  received  his  D.C.L.  in  1885. 


i870       PRESIDENT   OF  THE   BRITISH  ASSOCIATION        355 

Oxford  about  it.  I  suppose  this  is  at  the  bottom  of  Jowett's  not 
writing  to  me.  But  I  hope  that  he  won't  fancy  that  I  should  be 
disgusted  at  the  opposition  and  object  to  come  li,e.  to  pay  his 
regular  visit  to  Balliol].  On  the  contrary,  the  more  complete 
Pusey's  success,  the  more  desirable  it  is  that  I  should  show  my 
face  there.  Altogether  it  is  an  awkward  position,  as  I  am  sup- 
posed to  know  nothing  of  what  is  going  on. 

The  situation  is  further  developed  in  a  letter  to  Dar- 
win:— 

Jermyn  Street, /««^  22,  1870. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  sent  the  books  to  Queen  Anne  St.  this 
morning.  Pray  keep  them  as  long  as  you  like,  as  I  am  not  using 
them. 

I  am  greatly  disgusted  that  you  are  coming  up  to  London 
this  week,  as  we  shall  be  out  of  town  next  Sunday.  It  is  the 
rarest  thing  in  the  world  for  us  to  be  away,  and  you  have  pitched 
upon  the  one  day.    Cannot  we  arrange  some  other  day  ? 

I  wish  you  could  have  gone  to  Oxford,  not  for  your  sake, 
but  for  theirs.  There  seems  to  have  been  a  tremendous  shindy 
in  the  Hebdomadal  board  about  certain  persons  who  were  pro- 
posed; and  I  am  told  that  Pusey  came  to  London  to  ascertain 
from  a  trustworthy  friend  who  were  the  blackest  heretics  out 
of  the  list  proposed,  and  that  he  was  glad  to  assent  to  your 
being  doctored,  when  he  got  back,  in  order  to  keep  out  seven 
devils  worse  than  that  first ! 

Ever,  oh  Coryphaeus  diabolicus,  your  faithful  follower, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  choice  of  a  subject  for  his  Presidential  Address  at 
the  British  Association  for  1870,  a  subject  which,  as  he  put 
it,  "  has  lain  chiefly  in  a  land  flowing  with  the  abominable, 
and  peopled  with  mere  grubs  and  mouldiness,"  was  sug- 
gested by  a  recent  controversy  upon  the  origin  of  life,  in 
which  the  experiments  of  Dr.  Bastian,  then  Professor  of 
Pathological  Anatomy  at  University  College,  London,  which 
seemed  to  prove  spontaneous  generation,  were  shown  by 
Professor  Tyndall  to  contain  a  flaw.  Huxley  had  naturally 
been  deeply  interested  from  the  first ;  he  had  been  consulted 
by  Dr.  Bastian,  and,  I  believe,  had  advised  him  not  to  pub- 
lish until  he  had  made  quite  sure  of  his  ground.  This  ques- 
tion and  the  preparation  of  the  course  of  Elementary  Biol- 


356  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

ogy  *  led  him  to  carry  on  a  series  of  investigations  lasting 
over  two  years,  which  took  shape  in  a  paper  upon  "  Peni- 
cillium,  Torula,  and  Bacterium,"  f  ^^^  read  in  Section  D 
at  the  British  Association,  1870;  and  in  his  article  on 
"  Yeast "  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  December  1872. 
He  laboriously  repeated  Pasteur's  experiments,  and  for 
years  a  quantity  of  flasks  and  cultures  used  in  this  work 
remained  at  South  Kensington,  until  they  were  destroyed 
in  the  eighties.  Of  this  work  Sir  J.  Hooker  writes  to 
him: — 

You  have  made  an  immense  leap  in  the  association  of  forms, 
and  I  cannot  but  suppose  you  approach  the  final  solution.  .  .  . 

I  have  always  fancied  that  it  was  rather  brains  and  boldness, 
than  eyes  or  microscopes  that  the  mycologists  wanted,  and  that 
there  was  more  brains  in  Berkeley's  J  crude  discoveries  than  in 
the  very  best  of  the  French  and  German  microscopic  verifica- 
tions of  them,  who  filch  away  the  credit  of  them  from  under 
Berkeley's  nose,  and  pooh-pooh  his  reasoning,  but  for  which 
we  should  be,  as  we  were. 

In  his  Presidential  Address,  "  Biogenesis  and  Abiogene- 
sis  "  (Coll.  Ess.  viii.  p.  229),  he  discussed  the  rival  theories 
of  spontaneous  generation  and  the  universal  derivation  of 
life  from  precedent  life,  and  professed  his  belief,  as  an  act 
of  philosophic  faith,  that  at  some  remote  period,  life  had 
arisen  out  of  inanimate  matter,  though  there  was  no  evi- 
dence that  anything  of  the  sort  had  occurred  recently,  the 
germ  theory  explaining  many  supposed  cases  of  spontaneous 
generation.  The  history  of  the  subject,  indeed,  showed  "  the 
great  tragedy  of  Science — the  slaying  of  a  beautiful  hy- 
pothesis by  an  ugly  fact — which  is  so  constantly  being 
enacted  under  the  eyes  of  philosophers,"  and  recalled  the 
warning  "  that  it  is  one  thing  to  refute  a  proposition,  and 
another  to  prove  the  truth  of  a  doctrine  which,  implicitly 
or  explicitly,  contradicts  that  proposition." 

Two  letters  to  Dr.  Dohm  refer  to  this  address  and  to 
the  meeting  of  the  Association. 

*  See  p.  405,  x^^.       t  Quart.  Journ.  After.  Set.,  1870,  x.  pp.  355-362. 
X  Rev.  W.  F.  Berkeley. 


I870  LETTER  TO   DOHRN  357 

Jermyn  Street,  April  30,  1870. 

My  dear  Whirlwind— I  have  received  your  two  letters; 
and  I  was  just  revolving  in  my  mind  how  best  to  meet  your 
wishes  in  regard  to  the  very  important  project  mentioned  in 
the  first,  when  the  second  arrived  and  put  me  at  rest. 

I  hope  I  need  not  say  how  heartily  I  enter  into  all  your 
views,  and  how  glad  I  shall  be  to  see  your  plan  for  "  Stations  "  * 
carried  into  effect.  Nothing  could  have  a  greater  influence  upon 
the  progress  of  zoology. 

A  plan  was  set  afoot  here  some  time  ago  to  establish  a  great 
marine  Aquarium  at  Brighton  by  means  of  a  company.  They 
asked  me  to  be  their  President,  but  I  declined,  on  the  ground 
that  I  did  not  desire  to  become  connected  with  any  commercial 
undertaking.  What  has  become  of  the  scheme  I  do  not  know, 
but  I  doubt  whether  it  would  be  of  any  use  to  you,  even  if  any 
connection  could  be  established. 

As  soon  as  you  have  any  statement  of  your  project  ready, 
send  it  to  me  and  I  will  take  care  that  it  is  brought  prominently 
before  the  British  public  so  as  to  stir  up  their  minds.  And  then 
we  will  have  a  regular  field-day  about  it  in  Section  D  at  Liver- 
pool. 

Let  me  know  your  new  ideas  about  insects  and  vertebrata  as 
soon  as  possible,  and  I  promise  to  do  my  best  to  pull  them  to 
pieces.  What  between  Kowalewsky  and  his  Ascidians,  Mikluko- 
Maclay  and  his  Fish-brains,  and  you  and  your  Arthropods,  I  am 
becoming  schwindelsuchtig,  and  spend  my  time  mainly  in  that 
pious  ejaculation  "  Donner  und  Blitz,"  in  which,  as  you  know, 
I  seek  relief.  Then  there  is  our  Bastian  who  is  making  living 
things  by  the  following  combination : — 

9  Ammoniae  Carbonatis 
Sodae  Phosphatis 
Aquae  destillatae 

quantum  sufficit 
Caloris  150®  Centigrade 
Vacui  pcrfectissimi 
Patientiae. 

Transubstantiation  will  be  nothing  to  this  if  it  turns  out  to 
be  true,  and  you  may  go  and  tell  your  neighbour  Januarius  to 
shut  up  his  shop  as  the  heretics  mean  to  outbid  him. 

*  Dr.  Dohrn  succeeded  in  establishing  such  a  zoological  **  station  ** 
at  Naples. 


358  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

Now  I  think  that  the  best  service  I  can  render  to  all  you 
enterprising  young  men  is  to  turn  devirs  advocate,  and  do  my 
best  to  pick  holes  in  your  work. 

By  the  way  Mikluko-Maclay  *  has  been  here ;  I  have  seen  a 
good  deal  of  him,  and  he  strikes  me  as  a  man  of  very  consider- 
able capacity  and  energy.    He  was  to  return  to  Jena  to-day. 

My  friend  Herbert  Spencer  will  be  glad  to  learn  that  you 
appreciate  his  book.  I  have  been  his  devil's  advocate  for  a 
number  of  years,  and  there  is  no  telling  how  many  brilliant 
speculations  I  have  been  the  means  of  choking  in  an  embryonic 
state. 

My  wife  does  not  know  that  I  am  writing  to  you,  or  she 
would  say  apropos  of  your  last  paragraph  that  you  are  an  en- 
tirely unreasonable  creature  in  your  notions  of  how  friendship 
should  be  manifested,  and  that  you  make  no  allowances  for  the 
oppression  and  exhaustion  of  the  work  entailed  by  what  Jean 
Paul  calls  a  "  Tochtervolles  Haus."  I  hope  I  may  live  to  see 
you  with  at  least  ten  children,  and  then  my  wife  and  I  will  be 
avenged.  Our  children  will  be  married  and  settled  by  that  time, 
and  we  shall  have  time  to  write  every  day  and  get  very  wroth 
when  you  do  not  reply  immediately. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

All  are  well,  the  children  so  grown  you  will  not  know  them. 

/ufy  1 8,  1870. 

My  dear  Dohrn — Notwithstanding  the  severe  symptoms  of 
"  Tochterkrankheit "  under  which  I  labour,  I  find  myself  equal 
to  reply  to  your  letter. 

The  British  Association  meets  in  September  on  the  14th  day 
of  that  month,  which  falls  on  a  Wednesday.  Of  course,  if  you 
come  you  shall  be  provided  for  by  the  best  specimen  of  Liver- 
pool hospitality.  We  have  ample  provision  for  the  entertain- 
ment of  the  "  distinguished  foreigner." 

Will  you  be  so  good  as  to  be  my  special  ambassador  with 
Haeckel  and  Gegenbaur,  and  tell  them  the  same  thing  ?  It  would 
give  me  and  all  of  us  particular  pleasure  to  see  them  and  to  take 
care  of  them. 

But  I  am  afraid  that  this  wretched  war  will  play  the  very 
deuce  with  our  foreign  friends.     If  you  Germans  do  not  give 


*  Mikluko-Maclay,  a  Russian  naturalist,  and  close  friend  of 
Haeckers,  who  later  adventured  himself  alone  among  the  cannibals 
of  New  Guinea. 


1870  SAVAGERY  OF   THE   LOWER   CLASSES  359 

that  crowned  swindler,  whose  fall  I  have  been  looking  for  ever 
since  the  coup  d'etat,  such  a  blow  as  he  will  never  recover  from, 
I  will  never  forgive  you.  Public  opinion  in  England  is  not 
worth  much,  but  at  present,  it  is  entirely  against  France.  Even 
the  Times  which  general  [ly]  contrives  to  be  on  the  baser  side 
of  a  controversy  is -at  present  on  the  German  side.  And  my 
daughters  announced  to  me  yesterday  that  they  had  converted 
a  young  friend  of  theirs  from  the  French  to  the  German  side, 
which  is  one  gained  for  you.  All  look  forward  with  great  pleas- 
ure to  seeing  you  in  the  autumn. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  addition  to  this  address  on  September  14,  he  read 
his  paper  on  "  Penicillium,"  etc.,  in  Section  D  on  the  20th. 
Speaking  on  the  17th,  after  a  lecture  of  Sir  J.  Lubbock's 
on  the  "  Social  and  Religious  Condition  of  the  Lower 
Races  of  Mankind,"  he  brought  forward  his  own  experi- 
ences as  to  the  practical  results  of  the  beliefs  held  by  the 
Australian  savages,  and  from  this  passed  to  the  increasing 
savagery  of  the  lower  classes  in  great  towns  such  as  Liver- 
pool, which  was  the  great  political  question  of  the  future, 
and  for  which  the  only  cure  lay  in  a  proper  system  of 
education. 

The  savagery  underlying  modem  civilisation  was  all  the 
more  vividly  before  him,  because  one  evening  he,  together 
with  Sir  J.  Lubbock,  Dr.  Bastian,  and  Mr.  Samuelson,  were 
taken  by  the  chief  of  the  detective  department  round  some 
of  the  worst  slums  in  Liverpool.  In  thieves'  dens,  doss 
houses,  dancing  saloons,  enough  of  suffering  and  criminality 
was  seen  to  leave  a  very  deep  and  painful  impression.  In 
one  of  these  places,  a  thieves'  lodging-house,  a  drunken  man 
with  a  cut  face  accosted  him  and  asked  him  whether  he 
was  a  doctor.  He  said  "  yes,"  whereupon  the  man  asked 
him  to  doctor  his  face.  He  had  been  fighting,  and  was 
terribly  excited.  Huxley  tried  to  pacify  him,  but  if  it  had 
not  been  for  the  intervention  of  the  detective,  the  man 
would  have  assaulted  him.  Afterwards  he  asked  the  de- 
tective if  he  were  not  afraid  to  go  alone  in  these  places, 
and  got  the  significant  answer,  "  Lord  bless  you,  sir,  drink 
and  disease  take  all  the  strength  out  of  them." 
24 


360  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

On  the  2 1  St,  after  the  general  meeting  of  the  Association, 
which  wound  up  the  proceedings,  the  Historical  Society 
of  Lancashire  and  Cheshire  presented  a  diploma  of  honorary 
membership  and  a  gift  of  books  to  Huxley,  Sir  G.  Stokes, 
and  Sir  J.  Hooker,  the  last  three  Presidents  of  the  British 
Association,  and  to  Professors  Tyndalf  and  Rankine  and 
Sir  J.  Lubbock,  the  lecturers  at  Liverpool.  Then  Huxley 
was  presented  with  a  mazer  bowl  lined  with  silver,  made 
from  part  of  one  of  the  roof  timbers  of  the  cottage  occupied 
as  his  headquarters  by  Prince  Rupert  during  the  siege  of 
Liverpool.  He  was  rather  taken  aback  when  he  found  the 
bowl  was  filled  with  champagne ;  after  a  moment,  however, 
he  drank  "  success  to  the  good  old  town  of  Liverpool,"  and 
with  a  wave  of  his  hand,  threw  the  rest  on  the  floor,  saying, 
"  I  pour  this  as  a  libation  to  the  tutelary  deities  of  the 
town." 

The  same  evening  he  was  the  guest  of  the  Sphinx  Club 
at  dinner  at  the  Royal  Hotel,  his  friend  Mr.  P.  H.  Rathbone 
being  in  the  chair,  and  in  proposing  the  toast  of  the  town 
and  trade  of  Liverpool,  declared  that  commerce  was  a 
greater  civiliser  than  all  the  religion  and  all  the  science  ever 
put  together  in  the  world,  for  it  taught  men  to  be  truthful 
and  punctual  and  precise  in  the  execution  of  their  engage- 
ments, and  men  who  were  truthful  and  punctual  and  precise 
in  the  execution  of  their  engagements  had  put  their  feet 
upon  the  first  rung  of  the  ladder  which  led  to  moral  and 
intellectual  elevation. 

There  were  the  usual  clerical  attacks  on  the  address, 
among  the  rest  a  particularly  violent  one  from  a  Unitarian 
pulpit.    Writing  to  Mr.  Samuelson  on  October  5  he  says : — 

Be  not  vexed  on  account  of  the  godly.    They  will  have  their 

way.     I  found  Mr.  *s  sermon  awaiting  me  on  my  return 

home.  It  is  an  able  paper,  but  like  the  rest  of  his  cloth  he  will 
not  take  the  trouble  to  make  himself  acquainted  with  the  ideas 
of  the  mall  whom  he  opposes.  At  least  that  is  the  case  if  he 
imagines  be  brings  me  under  the  range  of  his  guns. 

On  October  2  he  writes  to  Tyndall : — 
I  have  not  yet  thanked  you  properly  for  your  great  con- 
tribution to  the  success  of  our  meeting  [i.e,  his  lecture  "  On  the 


i870  LETTER  TO  DR.   DOHRN  361 

Scientific  Uses  of  the  Imagination."]  I  was  nervous  over  the 
passage  about  the  clergy,  but  those  confounded  parsons  seem  to 
me  to  let  you  say  anything  while  they  bully  me  for  a  word  or  a 
phrase.  It's  the  old  story,  "one  man  may  steal  a  horse  while 
the  other  may  not  look  over  the  wall." 

Tyndall  was  not  to  be  outdone,  and  replied : — 

The  parsons  know  very  well  that  I  mean  kindness ;  if  I  cor- 
rect them  I  do  it  in  love  and  not  in  wrath. 

One  more  extract  from  a  letter  to  Dr.  Dohrn,  under 
date  of  November  17.  The  first  part  is  taken  up  with  a 
long  and  detailed  description  of  the  best  English  micro- 
scopes and  their  price,  for  Dr.  Dohrn  wished  to  get  one ; 
and  my  father  volunteered  to  procure  it  for  him.  The  rest 
of  the  letter  has  a  more  general  interest  as  giving  his  views 
on  the  great  struggle  between  France  and  Germany  then 
in  progress,  his  distrust  of  militarism,  and  above  all,  his 
hatred  of  lying,  political  as  much  as  any  other: — 

This  wretched  war  is  doing  infinite  mischief,  but  I  do  not  see 
what  Germany  can  do  now  but  carry  it  out  to  the  end. 

I  began  to  have  some  sympathy  with  the  French  after  Sedan, 
but  the  Republic  lies  harder  than  the  Empire  did,  and  the  whole 
country  seems  to  me  to  be  rotten  to  the  core.  The  only  figure 
which  stands  out  with  anything  like  nobility  or  dignity,  on  the 
French  side,  is  that  of  the  Empress,  and  she  is  only  a  second- 
rate  Marie-Antoinette.  There  is  no  Roland,  no  Corday,  and 
apparently  no  man  of  any  description. 

The  Russian  row  is  beginning,  and  the  rottenness  of  English 
administration  will  soon,  I  suppose,  have  an  opportunity  of 
displaying  itself.  Bad  days  are,  I  am  afraid,  in  store  for  all  of 
us,  and  the  worst  for  Germany  if  it  once  becomes  thoroughly 
bitten  by  the  military  mad  dog. 

The  "  happy  family  "  is  flourishing  and  was  afflicted,  even 
over  its  breakfast,  when  I  gave  out  the  news  that  you  had 
been  ill. 

The  wife  desires  her  best  remembrances,  and  we  all  hope 
you  are  better. 

The  high  pressure  under  which  Huxley  worked,  and 
his  abundant  output,  continued  undiminished  through  the 
autumn  and  winter.    Indeed,  he  was  so  busy  that  he  post- 


362  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiy 

poned  his  Lectures  to  Working  Men  in  London  from  Octo- 
ber to  February  1871.  On  October  3  he  lectured  in  Leices- 
ter on  "  What  is  to  be  Learned  from  a  Piece  of  Coal,"  a 
parallel  lecture  to  that  of  1868  on  "A  Piece  of  Chalk." 
On  the  17th  and  24th  he  lectured  at  Birmingham  on  "  Ex- 
tinct Animals  intermediate  between  Reptiles  and  Birds" 
— a  subject  which  he  had  made  peculiarly  his  own  by  long 
study;  and  on  December  29  he  was  at  Bradford,  and  lec- 
tured at  the  Philosophical  Institute  upon  "  The  Formation 
of  Coal  "  {Coll.  Ess.  viii.). 

He  was  also  busy  with  two  Royal  Commissions ;  still,  at 
whatever  cost  of  the  energy  and  time  due  to  his  own  investi- 
gations and  those  additional  labours  by  which  he  increased 
his  none  too  abundant  income,  he  felt  it  his  duty,  in  the 
interests  of  his  ideal  of  education,  to  come  forward  as  a 
candidate  for  the  newly-instituted  School  Board  for  London. 
This  was  the  practical  outcome  of  the  rising  interest  in 
education  all  over  the  country ;  on  its  working,  he  felt,  de- 
pended momentous  issues — the  fostering  of  the  moral  and 
physical  well-being  of  the  nation ;  the  quickening  of  its  in- 
telligence and  the  maintenance  of  its  commercial  suprem- 
acy. Withal,  he  desired  to  temper  "  book-learning "  with 
something  of  the  direct  knowledge  of  nature:  on  the  one 
hand,  as  an  admirable  instrument  of  education,  if  properly 
applied ;  on  the  other,  as  preparing  the  way  for  an  attitude 
of  mind  which  could  appreciate  the  reasons  for  the  immense 
changes  already  beginning  to  operate  in  human  thought. 

Moreover,  he  possessed  a  considerable  knowledge  of  the 
working  of  elementary  education  throughout  the  country, 
owing  to  his  experience  as  examiner  under  the  Science  and 
Art  Department,  the  establishment  of  which  he  describes  as 
"  a  measure  which  came  into  existence  unnoticed,  but  which 
will,  I  believe,  turn  out  to  be  of  more  importance  to  the 
welfare  of  the  people  than  many  political  changes  over 
which  the  noise  of  battle  has  rent  the  air"  (Scientific 
Education,  1869;  Coll.  Ess.  lii.  p.  131). 

Accordingly,  though  with  health  uncertain,  and  in  the 
midst  of  exacting  occupations,  he  felt  that  he  ought  not  to 
stand  aside  at  so  critical  a  moment,  and  offered  himself  for 


i870  THE   LONDON  SCHOOL  BOARD  363 

election  in  the  Marylebone  division  with  a  secret  sense  that 
rejection  would  in  many  ways  be  a  great  relief. 

The  election  took  place  on  November  29,  and  Huxley 
came  out  second  on  the  poll.  He  had  had  neither  the  means 
nor  the  time  for  a  regular  canvass  of  the  electors.  He  was 
content  to  address  several  public  meetings,  and  leave  the 
result  to  the  interest  he  could  awaken  amongst  his  hearers. 
His  views  were  further  brought  before  the  public  by  the 
action  of  the  editor  of  the  Contemporary  Review^  who,  before 
the  election,  "  took  upon  himself,  in  what  seemed  to  him  to 
be  the  public  interest,"  to  send  to  the  newspapers  an  extract 
from  Huxley's  article,  "  The  School  Boards :  what  they  can 
do,  and  what  they  may  do/*  which  was  to  appear  in  the 
December  number. 

In  this  article  will  be  found  {Coll  Ess,  iii.  p.  374)  a  full 
account  of  the  programme  which  he  laid  down  for  himself, 
and  which  to  a  great  extent  he  saw  carried  into  effect,  in  its 
fourfold  division— of  physical  drill  and  discipline,  not  only 
to  improve  the  physique  of  the  children,  but  as  an  intro- 
duction to  all  other  sorts  of  training— of  domestic  training, 
especially  for  g^rls— of  education  in  the  knowledge  of  moral 
and  social  laws  and  the  engagement  of  the  affections  for 
what  is  good  and  against  what  is  evil — ^and  finally,  of  intel- 
lectual training.  And  it  should  be  noted  that  he  did  not  only 
regard  intellectual  training  from  the  utilitarian  point  of 
view;  he  insisted,  e.g.  on  the  value  of  reading  for  amuse- 
ment as  "  one  of  its  most  valuable  uses  to  hard- worked 
people." 

Much  as  he  desired  that  this  intellectual  training  should 
be  efficient,  the  most  cursory  perusal  of  this  article  will 
show  how  far  he  placed  the  moral  training  above  the  in- 
tellectual, which,  by  itself,  would  only  turn  the  gutter-child 
into  "  the  subtlest  of  all  the  beasts  of  the  field,"  and  how 
wide  of  the  mark  is  the  cartoon  at  this  period  representing 
him  as  the  professor  whose  panacea  for  the  ragged  children 
was  to  "  cram  them  full  of  nonsense." 

In  the  third  section  are  also  to  be  found  his  arguments 
for  the  retention  of  Bible-reading  in  the  elementary  schools. 
He  reproached  extremists  of  either  party  for  confounding 


364  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

the  science,  theology,  with  the  affection,  religion,  and  either 
crying  for  more  theology  under  the  name  of  religion,  or 
demanding  the  abolition  of  "  religious  "  teaching  in  order 
to  get  rid  of  theology,  a  step  which  he  likens  to  "  burning 
your  ship  to  get  rid  of  the  cockroaches." 

As  regards  his  actual  work  on  the  Board,  I  must  ex- 
press my  thanks  to  Dr.  J.  H.  Gladstone  for  his  kindness 
in  supplementing  my  information  with  an  account  based 
partly  on  his  own  long  experience  of  the  Board,  partly  on 
the  reminiscences  of  members  contemporary  with  my  father. 

The  Board  met  first  on  December  15,  for  the  purpose 
of  electing  a  Chairman.  As  a  preliminary,  Huxley  pro- 
posed and  carried  a  motion  that  no  salary  be  attached  to 
the  post.  He  was  himself  one  of  the  four  members  pro- 
posed for  the  Chairmanship;  but  the  choice  of  the  Board 
fell  upon  Lord  Lawrence.  In  the  words  of  Dr.  Glad- 
stone : — 

Huxley  at  once  took  a  prominent  part  in  the  proceedings, 
and  continued  to  do  so  till  the  beginning  of  the  year  1872,  when 
ill-health  compelled  him  to  retire. 

At  first  there  was  much  curiosity  both  inside  and  outside  the 
Board  as  to  how  Huxley  would  work  with  the  old  educationists, 
the  clergy,  dissenting  ministers,  and  the  miscellaneous  body  of 
eminent  men  that  comprised  the  first  Board.  His  antagonism 
to  many  of  the  methods  employed  in  elementary  schools  was 
well  known  from  his  various  discourses,  which  had  been  recently 
published  together  under  the  title  of  Lay  Sermons,  Addresses, 
and  Reviews,  I  watched  his  course  with  interest  at  the  time; 
but  for  the  purpose  of  this  sketch  I  have  lately  sought  informa- 
tion from  such  of  the  old  members  of  the  Board  as  are  still 
living,  especially  the  Earl  of  Harrowby,  Bishop  Barry,  the  Rev. 
Dr.  Angus,  and  Mr.  Edward  North  Buxton,  together  with  Mr. 
Croad,  the  Clerk  of  the  Board.  They  soon  found  proof  of  his 
great  energy,  and  his  power  of  expressing  his  views  in  clear 
and  forcible  language;  but  they  also  found  that  with  all  his 
strong  convictions  and  lofty  ideals  he  was  able  and  willing  to 
enter  into  the  views  of  others,  and  to  look  at  a  practical  question  . 
from  its  several  sides.  He  could  construct  as  well  as  criticise. 
Having  entered  a  public  arena  somewhat  late  in  life,  and  being 
of  a  sensitive  nature,  he  had  scarcely  acquired  that  calmness 
and  pachydermatous  quality  which  is  needful  for  one's  personal 


i87o  THE  LONDON  SCHOOL  BOARD  365 

comfort ;  but  his  colleagues  soon  came  to  respect  him  as  a  per- 
fectly honest  antagonist  or  supporter,  and  one  who  did  not 
allow  differences  of  conviction  to  interfere  with  friendly  inter- 
course. 

The  various  sections  of  the  clerical  party  indeed  looked 
forward  with  great  apprehension  to  his  presence  on  the 
Board,  but  the  more  liberal  amongst  them  ventured  to  find 
ground  for  hoping  that  they  and  he  would  not  be  utterly 
opposed  so  far  as  the  work  of  practical  organisation  was 
concerned,  in  the  declaration  of  his  belief  that  true  education 
was  impossible  without  "  religion,"  of  which  he  declared 
that  all  that  has  an  unchangeable  reality  in  it  is  constituted 
by  the  love  of  some  ethical  ideal  to  govern  and  guide  con- 
duct, "  together  with  the  awe  and  reverence,  which  have  no 
kinship  with  base  fear,  but  rise  whenever  one  tries  to  pierce 
below  the  surface  of  things,  whether  they  be  material  or 
spiritual."  And  in  fact  a  cleavage  took  place  between  him 
and  the  seven  extreme  *'  secularists  "  on  the  Board  (the  seven 
champions  of  unchristendom,  as  their  opponents  dubbed 
them)  on  the  question  of  the  reading  of  the  Bible  in  schools 
(see  below,  p.  367).* 

One  of  the  earliest  proposals  laid  before  the  Board  was 
a  resolution  to  open  the  meetings  with  prayer.  To  this 
considerable  opposition  was  offered;  but  a  bitter  debate  was 
averted  by  Huxley  pointing  out  that  the  proposal  was  ultra 
vires,  inasmuch  as  under  the  Act  constituting  the  Board  the 
business  for  which  they  were  empowered  to  meet  did  not 
include  prayer.  Hereupon  a  requisition — in  which  he  him- 
self joined — ^was  made  to  allow  the  use  of  a  committee-room 
to  those  who  wished  to  unite  in  a  short  service  before  the 
weekly  meetings,  an  arrangement  which  has  continued  to 
the  present  time. 

At  the  second  meeting,  on  December  21,  he  gave  notice 
of  a  motion  to  appoint  a  committee  to  consider  and  report 

*  Bishop  Barry  calls  particular  attention  to  his  attitude  on  this 
point,  "  because,"  he  says,  **  it  is  (I  think)  often  misunderstood.  In 
the  Life  (for  instance)  0/  tfu  Right  Honourable  W.  //.  Smith,  published 
not  long  ago,  Huxley  is  supposed,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  have  been 
the  leader  of  the  Secularist  party." 


366  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

Upon  the  scheme  of  education  to  be  adopted  in  the  Board 
Schools. 

This  motion  came  up  for  consideration  on  February 
15,  1871.  In  introducing  it,  he  said  that  such  a  committee 
ought  to  consider — 

First,  the  general  nature  and  relations  of  the  schools  which 
may  come  under  the  Board.  Secondly,  the  amount  of  time  to 
be  devoted  to  educational  purposes  in  such  schools ;  and  Thirdly, 
the  subject-matter  of  the  instruction  or  education,  or  teaching, 
or  training,  which  is  to  be  given  in  these  schools. 

But  this,  by  itself,  he  continued,  would  be  incomplete. 
At  one  end  of  the  scale  he  advocated  Infant  schools,  and 
urged  a  connection  with  the  excellent  work  of  the  Ragged 
schools.  At  the  other  end  he  desired  to  see  continuation 
schools,  and  ultimately  some  scheme  of  technical  education. 
A  comprehensive  scheme,  indeed,  would  involve  an  educa- 
tional ladder  from  the  gutter  to  the  university,  whereby 
children  of  exceptional  ability  might  reach  the  place  for 
which  nature  had  fitted  them. 

The  subject  matter  of  elementary  instruction  must  be 
limited  by  what  was  practicable  and  desirable.  The  revised 
code  had  done  too  little ;  it  had  taught  the  use  of  the  tools 
of  learning,  while  denying  all  sorts  of  knowledge  on  which 
to  exercise  them  afterwards.  And  here  incidentally  he  re- 
pudiated the  notion  that  the  English  child  was  stupid;  on 
the  contrary,  he  thought  the  two  finest  intellects  in  Europe 
at  this  time  were  the  English  and  the  Italian. 

In  particular  he  advocated  the  teaching  of  "the  first 
elements  of  physical  science  " ;  "  by  which  I  do  not  mean 
teaching  astronomy  and  the  use  of  the  globes,  and  the  rest 
of  the  abominable  trash — but  a  little  instruction  of  the  child 
in  what  is  the  nature  of  common  things  about  him;  what 
their  properties  are,  and  in  what  relation  this  actual  body  of 
man  stands  to  the  universe  outside  of  it."  "  There  is  no 
form  of  knowledge  or  instruction  in  which  children  take 
greater  interest." 

Drawing  and  music,  too,  he  considered,  should  be  taught 
in  every  elementary  school,  not  to  produce  painters  or 


i87i  RELIGIOUS  INSTRUCTION   IN   SCHOOLS  367 

musicians,  but  as  civilising  arts.  History,  except  the  most 
elementary  notions,  he  put  out  of  court,  as  too  advanced  for 
children. 

Finally,  he  proposed  a  list  of  members  to  serve  on  the 
Education  Committee  in  a  couple  of  sentences  with  a  hu- 
morous twist  in  them  which  disarmed  criticism.  "  On  a 
former  occasion  I  was  accused  of  having  a  proclivity  in 
favour  of  the  clergy,  and  recollecting  this,  I  have  only  given 
them  in  this  instance  a  fair  proportion  of  the  representation. 
If,  however,  I  have  omitted  any  gentleman  who  thinks  he 
ought  to  be  on  the  committee,  I  can  only  assure  him  that 
above  all  others  I  should  have  been  glad  to  put  him  on." 

That  day  week  the  committee  was  elected,  about  a  third 
of  the  members  of  the  Board  being  chosen  to  serve  on  it. 
At  the  same  meeting.  Dr.  Gladstone  continues — 

Mr.  W.  H.  Smith,  the  well-known  member  of  Parliament, 
proposed,  and  Mr.  Samuel  Morley,  M.P.,  seconded,  a  resolution 
in  favour  of  religious  teaching — "  That,  in  the  schools  provided 
by  the  Board,  the  Bible  shall  be  read,  and  there  shall  be  given 
therefrom  such  explanations  and  such  instruction  in  the  prin- 
ciples of  religion  and  morality  as  are  suited  to  the  capacities  of 
children,"  with  certain  provisos.  Several  antagonistic  amend- 
ments were  proposed;  but  Prof.  Huxley  gave  his  support  to 
Mr.  Smith's  resolutions,  which,  however,  he  thought  might  be 
trimmed  and  amended  in  a  way  that  the  Rev.  Dr.  Angus  had 
suggested.  His  speech,  defining  his  own  position,  was  a  very 
remarkable  one.  He  said  it  was  assumed  in  the  public  mind 
that  this  question  of  religious  instruction  was  a  little  family 
quarrel  between  the  different  sects  of  Protestantism  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  old  Catholic  Church  on  the  other.  Side  by  side 
with  this  much  shivered  and  splintered  Protestantism  of  theirs, 
and  with  the  united  fabric  of  the  Catholic  Church  (not  so  strong 
temporally  as  she  used  to  be,  otherwise  he  might  not  have  been 
addressing  them  at  that  moment)  'there  was  a  third  party  grow- 
ing up  into  very  considerable  and  daily  increasing  significance, 
which  had  nothing  to  do  with  either  of  those  great  parties,  and 
which  was  pushing  its  own  way  independent  of  them,  having 
its  own  religion  and  its  own  morality,  which  rested  in  no  way 
whatever  on  the  foundations  of  the  other  two."  He  thought 
that  "  the  action  of  the  Board  should  be  guided  and  influenced 
very  much  by  the  consideration  of  this  third  great  aspect  of 


368  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

things,"  which  he  called  the  scientific  aspect,  for  want  of  a 
better  name. 

"  It  had  been  very  justly  said  that  they  had  a  great  mass  of 
low  half-instructed  population  which  owed  what  little  redemp- 
tion from  ignorance  and  barbarism  it  possessed  mainly  to  the 
efforts  of  the  clergy  of  the  different  denominations.  Any  sys- 
tem of  gaining  the  attention  of  these  people  to  these  matters 
must  be  a  system  connected  with,  or  not  too  rudely  divorced 
from  their  own  system  of  belief.  He  wanted  regulations,  not 
in  accordance  with  what  he  himself  thought  was  right,  but  in 
the  direction  in  which  thought  was  moving."  He  wanted  an 
elastic  system,  that  did  not  oppose  any  obstacle  to  the  free  play 
of  the  public  mind, 

Huixley  voted  against  all  the  proposed  amendments,^ and  in 
favour  of  Mr.  Smith's  motion.  There  were  only  three  who 
voted  against  it;  while  the  three  Roman  Catholic  members  re- 
frained from  voting.  This  basis  of  religious  instruction,  prac- 
tically unaltered,  has  remained  the  law  of  the  Board  ever  since. 

There  was  a  controversy  in  the  papers,  between  Prof.  Hux- 
ley and  the  Rev.  W.  H.  Freemantle,  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
explanations  of  the  Bible  lessons.  Huxley  maintained  that  it 
should  be  purely  grammatical,  geographical,  and  historical  in 
its  nature;  Freemantle  that  it  should  include  some  species  of 
distinct  religious  teaching,  but  not  of  a  denominational  char- 
acter.* 

In  taking  up  this  position,  Huxley  expressly  disclaimed 
any  desire  for  a  mere  compromise  to  smooth  over  a  diffi- 
culty. He  supported  what  appeared  to  be  the  only  work- 
able plan  under  the  circumstances,  though  it  was  not  his 
ideal ;  for  he  would  not  have  used  the  Bible  as  the  agency 
for  introducing  the  religious  and  ethical  idea  into  education 
if  he  had  been  dealing  with  a  fresh  and  untouched  popu- 
lation. 

His  appreciation  of  the,  literary  and  historical  value  of 
the  Bible,  and  the  effect  it  was  likely  to  produce  upon  the 

*  Cp.  extract  from  Lord  Shaftesbury's  journal  about  this  corre- 
spondence i^Life  and  Work  of  Lord  Shaftesbury,  iii.  282).  **  Professor 
Huxley  has  this  definition  of  morality  and  religion :  *  Teach  a  child 
what  is  wise,  that  is  morality.  Teach  him  what  is  wise  and  beautiful, 
that  is  religion!^  Let  no  one  henceforth  despair  of  making  things 
clear  and  of  giving  explanations  !  " 


i87i  LETTERS  ON   BIBLE   TEACHING  369 

school  children,  circumstanced  as  they  were,  is  sometimes 
misunderstood  to  be  an  endorsement  of  the  vulgar  idea  of  it 
But  it  always  remained  his  belief  **  that  the  principle  of  strict 
secularity  in  State  education  is  sound,  and  must  eventually 
prevail."  * 

His  views  on  dogmatic  teaching  in  State  schools,  may 
be  gathered  further  from  two  letters  at  the  period  when  an 
attempt  was  being  made  to  upset  the  so-called  compromise. 

The  first  appeared  in  the  Times  of  April  29,  1893 : — 

Sir — In  a  leading  article  of  your  issue  of  to-day  you  state, 
with  perfect  accuracy,  that  I  supported  the  arrangement  respect- 
ing religious  instruction  agreed  to  by  the  London  School  Board 
in  1 871,  and  hitherto  undisturbed.  But  you  go  on  to  say  that 
"the  persons  who  framed  the  rule"  intended  it  to  include 
definite  teaching  of  such  theological  dogmas  as  the  Incarnation. 

I  cannot  say  what  may  have  been  in  the  minds  of  the 
framers  of  the  rule;  but,  assuredly,  if  I  had  dreamed  that  any 
such  interpretation  could  fairly  be  put  upon  it,  I  should  have 
opposed  the  arrangement  to  the  best  of  my  ability. 

In  fact,  a  year  before  the  rule  was  framed  I  wrote  an  article 
in  the  Contemporary  Review,  entitled  "The  School  Boards — 
what  they  can  do  and  what  they  may  do,"  in  which  I  argued 
that  the  terms  of  the  Education  Act  excluded  such  teaching  as 
it  is  now  proposed  to  include.  And  I  support  my  contention  by 
the .  following  citation  from  a  speech  delivered  by  Mr.  Forster 
at  the  Birkbeck  Institution  in  1870: — 

I  have  the  fullest  confidence  that  in  the  reading  and  explain- 
ing of  the  Bible  what  the  children  will  be  taught  will  be  the 
great  truths  of  Christian  life  and  conduct,  which  all  of  us  desire 
they  should  know,  and  that  no  efforts  will  be  made  to  cram  into 
their  poor  little  minds  theological  dogmas  which  their  tender 
age  prevents  them  from  understanding.  —  I  am,  Sir,  your 
obedient  servant,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

HoDESLEA,  Eastbournb,  A/rt/  28. 

♦  As  a  result  of  some  remarks  of  Mr.  Clodd's  on  the  matter  in  Fio- 
tuers  of  Evolution^  a  correspondent,  some  time  after,  wrote  to  him  as 
follows : 

**  In  the  report  upon  State  Education  in  New  Zealand,  1895,  drawn 
up  by  R.  Laishly,  the  following  occurs,  p.  13 : — *  Professor  Huxley 
gives  me  leave  to  state  his  opinion  to  be  that  the  principle  of  strict 
secularity  in  State  education  is  sound,  and  must  eventually  prevail."* 


370  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

The  second  is  to  a  correspondent  who  wrote  to  ask  him 
whether  adhesion  to  the  compromise  had  not  rendered  non- 
sensical the  teaching  given  in  a  certain  lesson  upon  the 
finding  of  the  youthful  Jesus  in  the  temple,  when,  after  they 
had  read  the  verse,  "  How  is  it  that  ye  sought  me  ?  Wist  ye 
not  that  I  must  be  about  my  Father's  business?  "  the  teacher 
asked  the  children  the  name  of  Jesus'  father  and  mother, 
and  accepted  the  simple  answer,  Joseph  and  Mary.  Thus 
the  point  of  the  story,  whether  regarded  as  reality  or  myth, 
is  slurred  over,  the  result  is  perplexity,  the  teaching,  in 
short,  is  bad,  apart  from  all  theory  as  to  the  value  of  the 
Bible. 

In  a  letter  to  the  Chronicle,  which  he  forwarded,  this 
correspondent  suggested  a  continuation  of  the  "  incrimi- 
nated lesson  " : — 

Suppose,  then,  that  an  intelligent  child  of  seven,  who  has 
just  heard  it  read  out  that  Jesus  excused  Himself  to  His  parents 
for  disappearing  for  three  days,  on  the  ground  that  He  was  about 
His  Father's  business,  and  has  then  learned  that  His  father's 
name  was  Joseph,  had  said  "  Please,  teacher,  was  this  the  Jesus 
that  gave  us  the  Lord's  Prayer  ?  "  The  teacher  answers  "  Yes." 
And  suppose  the  child  rejoins,  "  And  is  it  to  His  father  Joseph 
that  he  bids  us  pray  when  we  say  Our  Father?"  But  there 
are  boys  of  nine,  ten,  eleven  years  in  Board  schools,  and  many 
such  boys  are  intelligent  enough  to  take  up  the  subject  of  the 
lesson  where  the  instructor  left  it.  "  Please,  teacher,"  asks  one 
of  these,  "  what  business  was  it  that  Jesus  had  to  do  for  His 
father  Joseph?  Had  he  stopped  behind  to  get  a  few  orders? 
Was  it  true  that  He  had  been  about  Joseph's  business?  And, 
if  it  was  not  true,  did  He  not  deserve  to  be  punished  ?  " 

Huxley  replied  on  October  i6,  1894: — 

Dear  Sir — I  am  one  with  you  in  hating  "  hush  up  "  as  I  do 
all  other  forms  of  lying ;  but  I  venture  to  submit  that  the  compro- 
mise of  1 87 1  was  not  a  "  hush-up."  If  I  had  taken  it  to  be  such 
I  should  have  refused  to  have  anything  to  do  with  it.  And  more 
specifically,  I  said  in  a  letter  to  the  Times  (see  Times,  29th 
April  1893)  at  the  beginning  of  the  present  controversy,  that 
if  I  had  thought  the  compromise  involved  the  obligatory  teach- 
ing of  such  dogmas  as  the  Incarnation  I  should  have  opposed  it. 

There  has  never  been  the  slightest  ambiguity  about  my  posi- 


i87i  LETTERS  ON   BIBLE   TEACHING  371 

tion  in  this  matter;  in  fact,  if  you  will  turn  to  one  paper  on  the 
School  Board  written  by  me  before  my  election  in  1870,  I  think 
you  will  find  that  I  anticipated  the  pith  of  the  present  discussion. 

The  persons  who  agreed  to  the  compromise,  did  exactly 
what  all  sincere  men  who  agree  to  compromise,  do.  For  the 
sake  of  the  enormous  advantage  of  giving  the  rudiments  of  a 
decent  education  to  several  generations  of  the  people,  they  ac- 
cepted what  was  practically  an  armistice  in  respect  of  certain 
matters  about  which  the  contending  parties  were  absolutely 
irreconcilable. 

The  clericals  have  now  "  denounced  "  the  treaty,  doubtless 
thinking  they  can  get  a  new  one  more  favourable  to  themselves. 

From  my  point  of  view,  I  am  not  sure  that  it  might  not  be 
well  for  them  to  succeed,  so  that  the  sweep  into  space  which 
would  befall  them  in  the  course  of  the  next  twenty-three  years 
might  be  complete  and  final. 

As  to  the  case  you  put  to  me — permit  me  to  continue  the 
dialogue  in  another  shape. 

Boy, — Please,  teacher,  if  Joseph  was  not  Jesus'  father  and 
God  was,  why  did  Mary  say,  "Thy  father  and  I  have  sought 
thee  sorrowing  "  ?  How  could  God  not  know  where  Jesus  was  ? 
How  could  He  be  sorry? 

Teacher, — When  Jesus  says  Father,  he  means  God;  but 
when  Mary  says  father,  she  means  Joseph. 

Boy, — Then  Mary  didn't  know  God  was  Jesus*  father? 

Teacher, — Oh,  yes,  she  did  (reads  the  story  of  the  Annun- 
ciation). 

Boy, — It  seems  to  me  very  odd  that  Mary  used  language 
which  she  knew  was  not  true,  and  taught  her  son  to  call  Joseph 
father.  But  there's  another  odd  thing  about  her.  If  she  knew 
her  child  was  God's  son,  why  was  she  alarmed  about  his  safety  ? 
Surely  she  might  have  trusted  God  to  look  after  his  own  son 
in  a  crowd. 

I  know  of  children  of  six  and  seven  who  are  quite  capable 
of  following  out  such  a  line  of  inquiry  with  all  the  severe  logic 
of  a  moral  sense  which  has  not  been  sophisticated  by  pious 
scrubbing. 

I  could  tell  you  of  stranger  inquiries  than  these  which  have 
been  made  by  children  in  endeavouring  to  understand  the  ac- 
count of  the  miraculous  conception.  • 

Whence  I  conclude  that  even  in  the  interests  of  what 
people  are  pleased  to  call  Christianity  (though  it  is  my  firm 
conviction  that  Jesus  would  have  repudiated  the  doctrine  of 


372 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 


the  Incarnation  as  warmly  as  that  of  the  Trinity),  it  may  be 
well  to  leave  things  as  they  are. 

All  this  is  for  your  own  eye.  There  is  nothing  in  substance 
that  I  have  not  said  publicly,  but  I  do  not  feel  called  upon  to 
say  it  over  again,  or  get  mixed  up  in  an  utterly  wearisome  con- 
troversy.— I  am,  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

However,  he  was  unsuccessful  in  his  proposal  that  a 
selection  be  made  of  passages  for  reading  from  the  Bible ; 
the  Board  refused  to  become  censors.  On  May  lo  he 
raised  the  question  of  the  diversion  from  the  education  of 
poor  children  of  charitable  bequests,  which  ought  to  be 
applied  to  the  augmentation  of  the  school  fund.  In  speak- 
ing to  this  motion  he  said  that  the  long  account  of  errors 
and  crimes  of  the  Catholic  Church  was  greatly  redeemed 
by  the  fact  that  that  Church  had  always  borne  in  mind  the 
education  of  the  poor,  and  had  carried  out  the  great  demo- 
cratic idea  that  the  soul  of  every  man  was  of  the  same  value 
in  the  eyes  of  his  Maker. 

The  next  matter  of  importance  in  which  he  took  part 
was  on  June  14,  when  the  Committee  on  the  Scheme 
of  Education  presented  its  first  report.  Dr.  Gladstone 
writes : — 

It  was  a  very  voluminous  document.  The  Committee  had 
met  every  week,  and,  in  the  words  of  Huxley,  "what  it  had 
endeavoured  to  do,  was  to  obtain  some  order  and  system  and 
uniformity  in  important  matters,  whilst  in  comparatively  unim- 
portant matters  they  thought  some  play  should  be  given  for  the 
activity  of  the  bodies  of  men  into  whose  hands  the  management 
of  the  various  schools  should  be  placed."  The  recommendations 
were  considered  on  June  21  and  July  12,  and  passed  without 
any  material  alterations  or  additions.  They  were  very  much 
the  same  as  existed  in  the  best  elementary  schools  of  the  period. 
Huxley's  chief  interest,  it  may  be  surmised,  was  in  the  sub- 
jects of  instruction.  It  was  passed  that,  in  infants'  schools 
there  should  be  the  Bible,  reading,  writing,  arithmetic,  object 
lessons  of  a  simple  character,  with  some  such  exercise  of  the 
hands  and  eyes  as  is  given  in  the  Kindergarten  system,  music, 
and  drill.  In  junior  and  senior  schools  the  subjects  of  instruc- 
tion were  divided  into  two  classes,  essential  and  discretionary, 
the  essentials  being  the  Bible,  and  the  principles  of  religion  and 


i87i  COMMITTEE  ON   EDUCATION  373 

morality,  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic,  English  grammar 
and  composition,  elementary  geography,  and  elementary  social 
economy,  history  of  England,  the  principles  of  book-keeping 
in  senior  schools,  with  mensuration  in  senior  boys'  schools.  All 
through  the  six  years  there  were  to  be  systematised  object  les- 
sons, embracing  a  course  of  elementary  instruction  in  physical 
science,  and  serving  as  an  introduction  to  the  science  examina- 
tions conducted  by  the  Science  and  Art  Department.  An 
analogous  course  of  instruction  was  adopted  for  elementary 
evening  schools.  In  moving  "  that  the  formation  of  science  and 
art  classes  in  connection  with  public  elementary  schools  be  en- 
couraged and  facilitated,"  Huxley  contended  strongly  for  it, 
saying,  "  The  country  could  not  possibly  commit  a  greater  error 
than  in  establishing  schools  in  which  die  direct  applications  of 
science  and  art  were  taught  before  those  who  entered  the  classes 
were  grounded  in  the  principles  of  physical  science."  In  advo- 
cating object  lessons  he  said,  "  The  position  that  science  was 
now  assuming,  not  only  in  relation  to  practical  life,  but  to 
thought,  was  such  that  those  who  remained  entirely  ignorant 
of  even  its  elementary  facts  were  in  a  wholly  unfair  position  as 
regarded  the  world  of  thought  and  the  world  of  practical  life." 
It  was,  moreover,  "  the  only  real  foundation  for  technical  edu- 
cation." 

Other  points  in  which  he  was  specially  concerned  were, 
that  the  universal  teaching  of  drawing  was  accepted,  against 
an  amendment  excluding  girls ;  that  domestic  economy  was 
made  a  discretionary  substitute  for  needlework  and  cutting- 
out;  while  he  spoke  in  defence  of  Latin  as  a  discretionary 
subject,  alternatively  with  a  modem  language.  It  was  true 
that  he  would  not  have  proposed  it  in  the  first  instance, 
not  because  a  little  Latin  is  a  bad  thing,  but  for  fear  of 
"  overloading  the  boat."  But,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was 
great  danger  if  education  were  not  thrown  open  to  all  with- 
out restriction.  If  it  be  urged  that  a  man  should  be  con- 
tent with  the  state  of  life  to  which  he  is  called,  the  obvious 
retort  is,  How  do  you  know  what  is  your  state  of  life,  unless 
you  try  what  you  are  called  to  ?  There  is  no  more  frightful 
"  sitting  on  the  safety  valve  "  than  in  preventing  men  of 
ability  from  having  the  means  of  rising  to  the  positions  for 
which  they,  by  their  talents  and  industry,  could  qualify 
themselves. 


374 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 


Further,  although  the  committee  as  a  whole  recom- 
mended that  discretionary  subjects  should  be  extras,  he 
wished  them  to  be  covered  by  the  general  payment,  in  which 
sense  the  report  was  amended. 

This  Education  Committee  (proceeds  Dr.  Gladstone)  con- 
tinued to  sit,  and  on  November  30  brought  up  a  report  in  favour 
of  the  Prussian  system  of  separate  class-rooms,  to  be  tried  in 
one  school  as  an  experiment.  This  reads  curiously  now  that  it 
has  become  the  system  almost  universally  adopted  in  the  London 
Board  Schools. 

In  regard  to  examinations  Huxley  strongly  supported  the 
view  that  the  teaching  in  all  subjects,  secular  or  sacred,  should 
be  periodically  tested. 

On  December  13,  Huxley  raised  the  question  whether  the 
selection  of  books  and  apparatus  should  be  referred  to  his  Com- 
mittee or  to  the  School  Management  Committee,  and  on  Jan- 
uary 10  following,  a  small  sub-committee  for  that  object  was 
formed.  Almost  immediately  after  this  he  retired  from  the 
Board. 

One  more  speech  of  his,  which  created  a  great  stir  at 
the  time,  must  be  referred  to,  namely  his  expression  of 
undisguised  hostility  to  the  system  of  education  maintained 
by  the  Ultramontane  section  of  the  Roman  Catholics.*  In 
October  the  bye-laws  came  up  for  consideration.  One  of 
them  provided  that  the  Board  should  pay  over  direct  to 
denominational  schools  the  fees  for  poor  children.  This 
he  opposed  on  the  ground  that  it  would  lead  to  repeated 
contests  on  the  Board,  and  further,  might  be  used  as  a  tool 
by  the  Ultramontanes  for  their  own  purposes.  Believing 
that  their  system  as  set  forth  in  the  syllabus,  of  securing 
complete  possession  of  the  minds  of  those  whom  they  taught 
or  controlled,  was  destructive  to  all  that  was  highest  in  the 
nature  of  mankind,  and  inconsistent  with  intellectual  and 
political  liberty,  he  considered  it  his  earnest  duty  to  oppose 
all  measures  which  would  lead  to  assisting  the  Ultramon- 
tanes in  their  purpose. 

Hereupon  he  was  vehemently  attacked,  for  example,  in 
the  Times  for  his  "  injudicious  and  even  reprehensible  tone  " 

*  Cp.  **  Scientific  Education,"  Co//.  Ess,  iii.  p.  iii. 


1871-72  ULTRAMONTANES  AND  EDUCATION  375 

which  "  aggravated  the  difficulties  his  opponents  might  have 
in  giving  way  to  him."  Was  this,  it  was  asked,  the  way  to 
get  Roman  Catholic  children  to  the  Board  schools?  Was 
it  not  an  abandonment  of  the  ideal  of  compulsory  edu- 
cation ? 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  that  the  question  was 
not  between  the  compulsory  inclusion  or  exclusion  of  poor 
children,  but  between  their  admission  at  the  cost  of  the 
Board  to  schools  under  the  Board's  own  control  or  outside 
it.  In  any  case  the  children  of  Roman  Catholics  were  not 
likely  to  get  their  own  doctrines  taught  in  Board  Schools, 
and  without  this  they  declared  they  would  rather  go  with- 
out education  at  all. 

Early  in  1872  Huxley  retired.  For  a  year  he  had  con- 
tinued at  this  task ;  then  his  health  broke  down,  and  feeling 
that  he  had  done  his  part,  from  no  personal  motives  of 
ambition,  but  rather  at  some  cost  to  himself,  for  what  he 
held  to  be  national  ends,  he  determined  not  to  resume  the 
work  after  the  rest  which  was  to  restore  him  to  health,  and 
made  his  resignation  definite. 

Dr.  Gladstone  writes : — 

On  February  7  a  letter  of  resignation  was  received  from 
him,  stating  that  he  was  "  reluctantly  compelled,  both  on  account 
of  his  health  and  his  private  affairs,  to  insist  on  giving  up  his 
seat  at  the  Board."  The  Rev.  Dr.  Rigg,  Canon  Miller,  Mr. 
Charles  Read,  and  Lord  Lawrence  expressed  their  deep  regret. 
In  the  words  of  Dr.  Rigg,  "they  were  losing  one  of  the  most 
valuable  members  of  the  Board,  not  only  because  of  his  intellect 
and  trained  acuteness,  but  because  of  his  knowledge  of  every 
subject  connected  with  culture  and  education,  and  because  of 
his  great  fairness  and  impartiality  with  regard  to  all  subjects 
that  came  under  his  observation." 

Though  Huxley  quitted  the  Board  after  only  fourteen 
months*  service,  the  memory  of  his  words  and  acts  combined  to 
influence  it  long  afterwards.  In  various  ways  he  expressed 
his  opinion  on  educational  matters,  publicly  and  privately.  He 
frequentiy  talked  with  me  on  the  subject  at  the  Athenaeum  Club, 
and  shortly  after  my  election  to  the  Board  in  1873,  I  find  it 
recorded  in  my  diary  that  he  insisted  strongly  on  the  necessity 
of  our  building  infants'  schools, — "  people  may  talk  about  intel- 
25 


376  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HIJXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

lectual  teaching,  but  what  we  principally  want  is  the  moral 
teaching." 

As  to  the  sub-committee  on  books  and  apparatus,  it  did 
little  at  first,  but  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  Board,  1873,  it 
became  better  organised  under  the  presidency  of  the  Rev.  Benja- 
min Waugh.  At  the  commencement  of  the  next  triennial  term 
I  became  the  chairman,  and  continued  to  be  such  for  eighteen 
years.  It  was  our  duty  to  put  into  practice  the  scheme  of 
instruction  which  Huxley  was  mainly  instrumental  in  settling. 
We  were  thus  able  indirectly  to  improve  both  the  means  and 
methods  of  teaching.  The  subjects  of  instruction  have  all  been 
retained  in  the  Curriculum  of  the  London  School  Board,  except, 
perhaps,  "  mensuration  "  and  "  social  economy."  The  most  im- 
portant developments  and  additions  have  been  in  the  direction 
of  educating  the  hand  and  eye.  Kindergarten  methods  have 
been  promoted.  Drawing,  on  which  Huxley  laid  more  stress 
than  his  colleagues  generally  did,  has  been  enormously  extended 
and  greatly  revolutionised  in  its  methods.  Object  lessons  and 
elementary  science  have  been  introduced  everywhere,  while 
shorthand,  the  use  of  tools  for  boys,  and  cookery  and  domestic 
economy  for  girls  are  becoming  essentials  in  our  schools.  Even- 
ing continuation  schools  have  lately  been  widely  extended. 
Thus  the  impulse  given  by  Huxley  in  the  first  nionths  of  the 
Board's  existence  has  been  carried  forward  by  others,  and  is 
now  affecting  the  minds  of  the  half  million  of  boys  and  girls 
in  the  Board  Schools  of  London,  and  indirectly  the  still  greater 
number  in  other  schools  throughout  the  land. 

I  must  further  express  my  thanks  to  Bishop  Barry  for 
permission  to  make  use  of  the  following  passages  from  the 
notes  contributed  by  him  to  Dr.  Gladstone : — 

I  had  the  privilege  of  being  a  member  of  his  committee  for 
defining  the  curriculum  of  study,  and  here  also— the  religious 
question  being  disposed  of — I  was  able  to  follow  much  the  same 
line  as  his,  and  I  remember  being  struck  not  only  with  his  clear- 
headed ability,  but  with  his  strong  commonsense,  as  to  what  was 
useful  and  practicable,  and  the  utter  absence  in  him  of  doc- 
trinaire  aspiration  after  ideal  impossibilities.  There  was  (I 
think)  very  little  under  his  chairmanship  of  strongly  accentu- 
ated difference  of  opinion. 

In  his  action  on  the  Board  generally  I  was  struck  with  these 
three  characteristics : — First,  his  remarkable  power  of  speaking 


i87i  HIS  ATTITUDE  TOWARDS  ADVERSARIES  377 

— I  may  say,  of  oratory — not  only  on  his  own  scientific  subjects, 
but  on  all  the  matters,  many  of  which  were  of  great  practical 
interest  and  touched  the  deepest  feelings,  which  came  before 
the  Board  at  that  critical  time.  Had  he  chosen — and  we  heard 
at  that  time  that  he  was  considering  whether  he  should  choose 
— ^to  enter  political  life,  it  would  certainly  have  made  him  a 
great  power,  possibly  a  leader,  in  that  sphere.  Next,  what  con- 
stantly appears  in  his  writings,  even  those  of  the  most  polemical 
kind — a  singular  candour  in  recognising  truths  which  might 
seem  to  militate  against  his  own  position,  and  a  power  of  under- 
standing and  respecting  his  adversaries'  opinions,  if  only  they 
were  strongly  and  conscientiously  held.  I  remember  his  saying 
on  one  occasion  that  in  his  earlier  experience  of  sickness  and 
suffering,  he  had  found  that  the  most  effective  helpers  of  the 
higher  humanity  were  not  the  scientist  or  the  philosopher,  but 
"  the  parson,  and  the  sister,  and  the  Bible  woman."  Lastly,  the 
strong  commonsense,  which  enabled  him  to  see  what  was 
"  within  the  range  of  practical  politics,"  and  to  choose  for  the 
cause  which  he  had  at  heart  the  line  of  least  resistance,  and  to 
check,  sometimes  to  rebuke,  intolerant  obstinacy  even  on  the 
side  which  he  was  himself  inclined  to  favour.  These  qualities 
over  and  above  his  high  intellectual  ability  made  him,  for  the 
comparatively  short  time  that  he  remained  on  the  Board,  one 
of  its  leading  members. 

No  less  vivid  is  the  impression  left,  after  many  years, 
upon  another  member  of  the  first  School  Board,  the  Rev. 
Benjamin  Waugh,  whose  life-long  work  for  the  children  is  so 
well  known.  From  his  recollections,  written  for  the  use  of 
Professor  Gladstone,  it  is  my  privilege  to  quote  the  follow- 
ing paragraphs : — 

I  was  drawn  to  him  most,  and  was  influenced  by  him  most, 
because  of  his  attitude  to  a  child.  He  was  on  the  Board  to 
establish  schools  for  children.  His  motive  in  every  argument, 
in  all  the  fun  and  ridicule  he  indulged  in,  and  in  his  occasional 
anger,  was  the  child.  He  resented  the  idea  that  schools  were  to 
train  either  congregations  for  churches  or  hands  for  factories. 
He  was  on  the  Board  as  a  friend  of  children.  What  he  sought 
to  do  for  the  child  was  for  the  child's  sake,  that  it  might  live  a 
fuller,  truer,  worthier  life.  If  ever  his  g^eat  tolerance  with  men 
with  whom  he  differed  on  general  principles  seemed  to  fail  him 
for  a  moment,  it  was  because  they  seemed  to  him  to  seek  other 
ends  than  the  child  for  its  own  sake.  .  .  . 


378  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

His  contempt  for  the  idea  of  the  world  into  which  we  were 
born  being  either  a  sort  of  clergyhouse  or  a  market-place,  was 
too  complete  to  be  marked  by  any  eagerness.  But  in  view  of  the 
market-place  idea  he  was  the  less  calm. 

Like  many  others  who  had  not  yet  come  to  know  in  what 
high  esteem  he  held  the  moral  and  spiritual  nature  of  children, 
I  had  thought  he  was  the  advocate  of  mere  secular  studies,  alike 
in  the  nation's  schools,  and  in  its  families.  But  by  contact  with 
him,  this  soon  became  an  impossible  idea.  In  very  early  days  on 
the  Board  a  remark  I  had  made  to  a  mutual  friend  which  im- 
plied this  unjust  idea  was  repeated  to  him.  "  Tell  Waugh  that 
he  talks  too  fast,"  was  his  message  to  me.  I  was  not  long  in 
finding  out  that  this  was  a  very  just  reproof.  .  .  . 

The  two  things  in  his  character  of  which  I  became  most 
conscious  by  contact  with  him,  were  his  childlikeness  and  his 
consideration  for  intellectual  inferiors.  His  arguments  were  as 
transparently  honest  as  the  arguments  of  a  child.  They  might 
or  might  not  seem  wrong  to  others,  but  they  were  never  untrue 
to  himself.  Whether  you  agreed  with  them  or  not,  they  always 
added  greatly  to  the  charm  of  his  personality.  Whether  his  face 
was  lighted  by  his  careless  and  playful  humour  or  his  great 
brows  were  shadowed  by  anger,  he  was  alike  expressing  himself 
with  the  honesty  of  a  child.  What  he  counted  iniquity  he  hated, 
and  what  he  counted  righteous  he  loved  with  the  candour  of  a 
child.  .  .  . 

Of  his  consideration  for  intellectual  inferiors  I,  of  course, 
needed  a  large  share,  and  it  was  never  wanting.  Towering  as 
was  his  intellectual  strength  and  keenness  above  me,  indeed 
above  the  whole  of  the  rest  of  the  members  of  the  Board,  he 
did  not  condescend  to  me.  The  result  was  never  humiliating. 
It  had  no  pain  of  any  sort  in  it.  He  was  too  spontaneous  and 
liberal  with  his  consideration  to  seem  conscious  that  he  was 
showing  any.  There  were  many  men  of  religious  note  upon  the 
Board,  of  some  of  whom  I  could  not  say  the  same. 

In  his  most  trenchant  attacks  on  what  he  deemed  wrong  in 
principles,  he  never  descended  to  attack  either  the  sects  which 
held  them  or  the  individuals  who  supported  them,  even  though 
occasionally  much  provocation  was  given  him.  He  might  not 
care  for  peace  with  some  of  the  theories  represented  on  the 
Board,  but  he  had  certainly  and  at  all  times  great  good- will  to 
men. 

As  a  speaker  he  was  delightful.  Few,  clear,  definite,  and 
calm  as  stars  were  the  words  he  spoke.    Nobo4y  talked  whilst 


i87i  WAUGH'S  ESTIMATE  OF   HUXLEY  379 

he  was  speaking.  There  were  no  tricks  in  his  talk.  He  did 
not  seem  to  be  trying  to  persuade  you  of  something.  What 
convinced  him,  that  he  transferred  to  others.  He  made  no 
attempt  to  misrepresent  those  opposed  to  him.  He  sought  only 
to  let  them  know  himself.  .  .  .  Even  the  sparkle  of  his  humour, 
like  the  sparkle  of  a  diamond,  was  of  the  inevitable  in  him, 
and  was  as  fair  as  it  was  enjoyable. 

As  one  who  has  tried  to  serve  children,  I  look  back  upon 
having  fallen  in  with  Mr.  Huxley  as  one  of  the  many  fortunate 
circumstances  of  my  life.  It  taught  me  the  importance  of  mak- 
ing acquaintance  with  facts,  and  of  studying  the  laws  of  them. 
Under  his  influence  it  was  that  I  most  of  all  came  to  see  the 
practical  value  of  a  single  eye  to  those  in  any  pursuit  of  life. 
I  saw  what  effect  they  had  on  emotions  of  charity  and  senti- 
ments of  justice,  and  what  simplicity  and  grandeur  they  gave 
to  appeals. 

My  last  conversation  with  him  was  at  Eastbourne  some  time 
in  1887  or  1888.  I  was  there  on  my  society*s  business.  "  Well, 
Waugh,  you're  still  busy  about  your  babies,"  was  his  greeting. 
"  Yes,"  I  responded,  "  and  you  are  still  busy  about  your  pigs." 
One  of  the  last  discussions  at  which  he  was  present  at  the 
School  Board  for  London  had  been  on  the  proximity  of  a  pig- 
gery to  a  site  for  a  school,  and  his  attack  on  Mr.  Gladstone  on 
the  Gadarene  swine  had  just  been  made  in  the  Nineteenth 
Century.  "  Do  you  still  believe  in  Gladstone  ?  "  he  continued. 
"  That  man  has  the  greatest  intellect  in  Europe.  He  was 
born  to  be  a  leader  of  men,  and  he  has  debased  himself  to  be 
a  follower  of  the  masses.  If  working  men  were  to-day  to 
vote  by  a  majority  that  two  and  two  made  five,  to-morrow 
Gladstone  would  believe  it,  and  find  them  reasons  for  it 
which  they  had  never  dreamed  of."  He  said  it  slowly  and  with 
sorrow. 

Two  more  incidents  are  connected  with  his  service  on 
the  School  Board.  A  wealthy  friend  wrote  to  him  in  the 
most  honourable  and  delicate  terms,  begging  him,  on  public 
grounds,  to  accept  £400  a  year  to  enable  him  to  continue 
his  work  on  the  Board.  He  refused  the  offer  as  simply 
and  straightforwardly  as  it  was  made;  his  means,  though 
not  large,  were  sufficient  for  his  present  needs. 

Further,  a  good  many  people  seemed  to  think  that  he 
meant  to  use  the  School  Board  as  a  stalking  horse  for  a 


38o  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxiv 

political  career.    To  one  of  those  who  urged  him  to  stand 
for  Parliament,  he  replied  thus: — 

Nov.  i8,  1871. 

Dear  Sir — It  has  often  been  suggested  to  me  that  I  should 
seek  for  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons ;  indeed  I  have  reason , 
to  think  that  many  persons  suppose  that  I  entered  the  London 
School  Board  simply  as  a  road  to  Parliament. 

But  I  assure  you  that  this  supposition  is  entirely  without 
foundation,  and  that  I  have  never  seriously  entertained  any 
notion  of  the  kind. 

The  work  of  the  School  Board  involves  me  in  no  small 
sacrifices  of  various  kinds,  but  I  went  into  it  with  my  eyes  open, 
and  with  the  clear  conviction  that  it  was  worth  while  to  make 
those  sacrifices  for  the  sake  of  helping  the  Education  Act  into 
practical  operation.  A  year's  experience  has  not  altered  that 
conviction;  but  now  that  the  most  difficult,  if  not  the  most  im- 
portant, part  of  our  work  is  done,  I  begin  to  look  forward  with 
some  anxiety  to  the  time  when  I  shall  be  relieved  of  duties 
which  so  seriously  interfere  with  what  I  regard  as  my  proper 
occupation. 

No  one  can  say  what  the  future  has  in  store  for  him,  but  at 
present  I  know  of  no  inducement,  not  even  the  offer  of  a  seat 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  which  would  lead  me,  even  tem- 
porarily and  partially,  to  forsake  that  work  ag^n. — I  am,  dear 
sir,  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  give  here  a  letter  to  me  from  Sir  Mountstuart  Grant 
Duff,  who  also  at  one  period  was  anxious  to  induce  him  to 
enter  Parliament : — 

Lexden  Park,  Colchester, 
4/A  November  1898. 

Dear  Mr.  Huxley — I  have  met  men  who  seemed  to  me  to 
possess  powers  of  mind  even  greater  than  those  of  your  father 
— ^his  friend  Henry  Smith  for  example;  but  I  never  met  any 
one  who  gave  me  the  impression  so  much  as  he  did,  that  he 
would  have  gone  to  the  front  in  any  pursuit  in  which  he  had 
seen  fit  to  engage.  Henry  Smith  had,  in  addition  to  his  astonish- 
ing mathematical  genius,  and  his  great  talents  as  a  scholar,  a 
rare  faculty  of  persuasiveness.  Your  father  used  to  speak  with 
much  admiration  and  some  amusement  of  the  way  in  which 
he  managed  to  get  people  to  take  his  view  by  appearing  to  take 
theirs;  but  he  never  could  have  been  a  power  in  a  popular  as- 
sembly, nor  have  carried  with  him  by  the  force  of  his  eloquence, 


i87i  LETTER   FROM   SIR  M.  E.  GRANT   DUFF  381 

great  masses  of  men.  I  do  not  think  that  your  father,  if  he  had 
entered  the  House  of  Commons  and  thrown  himself  entirely  into 
political  life,  would  have  been  much  behind  Gladstone  as  a 
debater,  or  Bright  as  an  orator.  Whether  he  had  the  stamina 
which  are  required  not  only  to  reach  but  to  retain  a  foremost 
place  in  politics,  is  another  question.  The  admirers  of  Prince 
Bismarck  would  say  that  the  daily  prayer  of  the  statesman 
should  be  for  "  une  bonne  digestion  et  un  mauvais  coeur."  "  Le 
mauvais  coeur  "  does  not  appear  to  be  "  de  toute  necessite,"  but, 
assuredly,  the  "bonne  digestion"  is.  Given  an  adequate  and 
equal  amount  of  ability  in  two  men  who  enter  the  House  of 
Commons  together,  it  is  the  man  of  strong  digestion,  drawing 
with  it,  as  it  usually  does,  good  temper  and  power  of  continuous 
application,  who  will  go  furthest.  Gladstone,  who  was  inferior 
to  your  father  in  intellect,  might  have  "given  points"  to  the 
Dragon  of  Wantley  who  devoured  church  steeples.  Your  father 
could  certainly  not  have  done  so,  and  in  that  respect  was  less 
well  equipped  for  a  life-long  parliamentary  struggle. 

I  should  like  to  have  seen  these  two  pitted  against  each 
other  with  that  "  substantial  piece  of  furniture  "  between  them 
behind  which  Mr.  Disraeli  was  glad  to  shelter  himself.  I  should 
like  to  have  heard  them  discussing  some  subject  which  they 
both  thoroughly  understood.  When  they  did  cross  swords  the 
contest  was  like  nothing  that  has  happened  in  our  times  save 
the  struggle  at  Omdurman.  It  was  not  so  much  a  battle  as  a 
massacre,  for  Gladstone  had  nothing  but  a  bundle  of  antiquated 
prejudices  wherewith  to  encounter  your  father's  luminous 
thought  and  exact  knowledge. 

You  know,  I  daresay,  that  Mr.  William  Rathbone,  then  M.P. 
for  Liverpool,  once  proposed  to  your  father  to  be  the  com- 
panion of  my  first  Indian  journey  in  1874-5,  he,  William  Rath- 
bone,  paying  all  your  father's  expenses.*  Mr.  Rathbone  made 
this  proposal  when  he  found  that  Lubbock,  with  whom  I  trav- 
elled a  great  deal  at  that  period  of  my  life,  was  unable  to  go 
with  me  to  India.  How  I  wish  your  father  had  said  "Yes." 
My  journey,  as  it  was,  turned  out  most  instructive  and  de- 
lightful; but  to  have  lived  five  months  with  a  man  of  his  ex- 

♦  Of  this,  Dr.  Tyndall  wrote  to  Mrs.  Huxley  : — *'  I  want  to  tell  you 
a  pleasant  conversation  I  had  last  night  with  Jodrell.  He  and  a 
couple  more  want  to  send  Hal  with  Grant  Duff  to  India,  Uking 
charge  of  his  duties  here  and  of  all  necessities  ghostly  and  bodily 
there ! " 


382  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  jfxiv 

traordinary  gifts  would  have  been  indeed  a  rare  piece  of  good 
fortune,  and  I  should  have  been  able  also  to  have  contributed 
to  the  work  upon  which  you  are  engaged  a  great  many  facts 
which  would  have  been  of  interest  to  your  readers.  You  will, 
however,  I  am  sure,  take  the  will  for  the  deed,  and  believe  me, 
very  sincerely  yours.  ^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^^^^_ 


CHAPTER   XXV 
1871 

*'  In  1871  "  (to  quote  Sir  M.  Foster),  "  the  post  of  Sec- 
retary to  the  Royal  Society  became  vacant  through  the 
resignation  of  William  Sharpey,  and  the  Fellows  learned 
with  glad  surprise  that  Huxley,  whom  they  looked  to  rather 
as  a  not  distant  President,  was  willing  to  undertake  the 
duties  of  the  office."  This  office,  which  he  held  until  1880, 
involved  him  for  the  next  ten  years  in  a  quantity  of  anxious 
work,  not  only  in  the  way  of  correspondence  and  adminis- 
tration, but  the  seeing  through  the  press  and  often  revising 
every  biological  paper  that  the  Society  received,  as  well  as 
reading  those  it  rejected.  Then,  too,  he  had  to  attend  every 
general,  council,  and  committee  meeting,  amongst  which 
latter  the  Challenger  Committee  was  a  load  in  itself.  Under 
pressure  of  all  this  work,  he  was  compelled  to  g^ve  up  active 
connection  with  other  learned  societies.* 

Other  work  this  year,  in  addition  to  the  School  Board, 
included  courses  of  lectures  at  the  London  Institution  in 
January  and  February,  on  "  First  Principles  of  Biology," 
and  from  October  to  December  on  "  Elementary  Physi- 
ology" ;  lectures  to  Working  Men  in  London  from  February 
to  April,  as  well  as  one  at  Liverpool,  March  25,  on  "  The 
Geographical  Distribution  of  Animals  " ;  two  lectures  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  May  12  and  19,  on  "  Berkeley  on  Vision," 
and  the  "  Metaphysics  of  Sensation  "  (Coll.  Ess,  vi.).  He 
published  one  paleontological  paper,  "  Fossil  Vertebrates 
from  the  Yarrow  Colliery"  (Huxley  and  Wright,  Irish 
Acad.  Trans.).     In  June  and  July  he  gave  36  lectures  to 

*  See  Appendix  II. 

383 


384  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxv 

schoolmasters — that  important  business  of  teaching  the 
teachers  that  they  might  set  about  scientific  instruction  in 
the  right  way.*  He  attended  the  British  Association  at 
Edinburgh,  and  laid  down  his  Presidency;  he  brought  out 
his  "  Manual  of  Vertebrate  Anatomy,"  and  wrote  a  review 
of  "  Mr.  Darwin's  Critics  "  (see  p.  391,  sq.),  while  on  Octo- 
ber 9  he  delivered  an  address  at  the  Midland  Institute, 
Birmingham,  on  "  Administrative  Nihilism  "  (Coll.  Ess.  i.). 
This  address,  written  between  September  21  and  28,  and 
remodelled  later,  was  a  pendant  to  his  educational  cam- 
paign on  the  School  Board ;  a  re-statement  and  justification 
of  what  he  had  said  and  done  there.  His  text  was  the  vari- 
ous objections  raised  to  State  interference  with  education; 
he  dealt  first  with  the  upholders  of  a  kind  of  caste  system, 
men  who  were  willing  enough  to  raise  themselves  and  their 
sons  to  a  higher  social  plane,  but  objected  on  semi-theo- 
logical grounds  to  anyone  from  below  doing  likewise — 
neatly  satirising  them  and  their  notions  of  gentility,  and 
quoting  Plato  in  support  of  his  contention  that  what  is 
wanted  even  more  than  means  to  help  capacity  to  rise  is 
"  machinery  by  which  to  facilitate  the  descent  of  incapacity 
from  the  higher  strata  to  the  Ipwer."  He  repeats  in  new 
phrase  his  warning  "  that  every  man  of  high  natural  ability, 
who  is  both  ignorant  and  miserable,  is  as  great  a  danger 
to  society  as  a  rocket  without  a  stick  is  to  people  who  fire 
it.  Misery  is  a  match  that  never  goes  out;  genius,  as  an 
explosive  power,  beats  gunpowder  hollow:  and  if  know- 
ledge, which  should  give  that  power  guidance,  is  wanting, 
the  chances  are  not  small  that  the  rocket  will  simply  run 
a-muck  among  friends  and  foes." 

Another  class  of  objectors  will  have  it  that  government 
should  be  restricted  to  police  functions,  both  domestic  and 
foreign,  that  any  further  interference  must  do  harm. 

Suppose,  however,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  we  accept 
the  proposition  that  the  functions  of  the  State  may  be  properly 
summed  up  in  the  one  great  negative  commandment — "  Thou 
shalt  not  allow  any  man  to  interfere  with  the  liberty  of  any 

♦  See  pp.  389,  405,  s^. 


i87i  THE   FUNCTIONS  OF  GOVERNMENT  385 

other  man," — I  am  unable  to  see  that  the  logical  consequence  is 
any  such  restriction  of  the  power  of  Government,  as  its  sup- 
porters imply.  If  my  next-door  neighbour  chooses  to  have  his 
drains  in  such  a  state  as  to  create  a  poisonous  atmosphere,  which 
I  breathe  at  the  risk  of  typhoid  and  diphtheria,  he  restricts  my 
just  freedom  to  live  just  as  much  as  if  he  went  about  with  a 
pistol  threatening  my  life;  if  he  is  to  be  allowed  to  let  his 
children  go  unvaccinated,  he  might  as  well  be  allowed  to  leave 
strychnine  lozenges  about  in  the  way  of  mine;  and  if  he  brings 
them  up  untaught  and  untrained  to  earn  their  living,  he  is 
doing  his  best  to  restrict  my  freedom,  by  increasing  the  burden 
of  taxation  for  the  support  of  gaols  and  workhouses,  which  I 
have  to  pay. 

The  higher  the  state  of  civilisation,  the  more  completely  do 
the  actions  of  one  member  of  the  social  body  influence  all  the 
rest,  and  the  less  possible  is  it  for  any  one  man  to  do  a  wrong 
thing  without  interfering,  more  or  less,  with  the  freedom  of  all 
his  fellow-citizens.  So  that,  even  upon  the  narrowest  view  of  the 
functions  of  the  State,  it  must  be  admitted  to  have  wider  powers 
than  the  advocates  of  the  police  theory  are  disposed  to  admit. 

This  leads  to  a  criticism  of  Mr.  Spencer's  elaborate  com- 
parison of  the  body  politic  to  the  body  physical,  a  compar- 
ison vitiated  by  the  fact  that  "among  the  higher  physio- 
logical organisms  there  is  none  which  is  developed  by  the 
conjunction  of  a  number  of  primitively  independent  exist- 
ences into  a  complete  whole." 

The  process  of  social  organisation  appears  to  be  comparable, 
not  so  much  to  the  process  of  organic  development,  as  to  the 
synthesis  of  the  chemist,  by  which  independent  elements  are 
gradually  built  up  into  complex  aggregations — in  which  each 
element  retains  an  independent  individuality,  though  held  in 
subordination  to  the  whole. 

It  is  permissible  to  quote  a  few  more  sentences  from  this 
address  for  the  sake  of  their  freshness,  or  as  illustrating  the 
writer's  ideas. 

Discussing  toleration,  "  I  cannot  discover  that  Locke 
fathers  the  pet  doctrine  of  modem  Liberalism,  that  the  tol- 
eration of  error  is  a  good  thing  in  itself,  and  to  be  reck- 
oned among  the  cardinal  virtues."  * 

*  This  bears  on  his  speech  against  Ultramontanism.     See  p.  374. 


386  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxv 

Of  Mr.  Spencer's  comparison  of  the  State  to  a  living 
body  in  the  interests  of  individualism: — 

I  suppose  it  is  universally  agreed  that  it  would  be  useless 
and  absurd  for  the  State  to  attempt  to  promote  friendship  and 
sympathy  between  man  and  man  directly.  But  I  see  no  reason 
why,  if  it  be  otherwise  expedient,  the  State  may  not  do  some- 
thing towards  that  end  indirectly.  For  example,  I  can  conceive 
the  existence  of  an  Established  Church  which  should  be  a  bless- 
ing to  the  community.  A  Church  in  which,  week  by  week, 
services  should  be  devoted,  not  to  the  iteration  of  abstract  propo- 
sitions in  theology,  but  to  the  setting  before  men's  minds  of  an 
ideal  of  true,  just,  and  pure  living;  a  place  in  which  those  who 
are  weary  of  the  burden  of  daily  cares  should  find  a  moment's 
rest  in  the  contemplation  of  the  higher  life  which  is  possible 
for  all,  though  attained  by  so  few ;  a  place  in  which  the  man  of 
strife  and  of  business  should  have  time  to  think  how  small, 
after  all,  are  the  rewards  he  covets  compared  with  peace  and 
charity.  Depend  upon  it,  if  such  a  Church  existed,  no  one 
would  seek  to  disestablish  it. 

The  sole  order  of  nobility  which,  in  my  judgment,  becomes 
a  philosopher,  is  the  rank  which  he  holds  in  the  estimation  of 
his  fellow- workers,  who  are  the  only  competent  judges  in  such 
matters.  Newton  and  Cuvier  lowered  themselves  when  the  one 
accepted  an  idle  knighthood,  and  the  other  became  a  baron  of 
the  empire.  The  great  men  who  went  to  their  graves  as  Michael 
Faraday  and  George  Grote  seem  to  me  to  have  understood  the 
dignity  of  knowledge  better  when  they  declined  all  such  mere- 
tricious trappings.* 

The  usual  note  of  high  pressure  recurs  in  the  following 
letter,  written  to  thank  Darwin  for  his  new  work,  The 
Descent  of  Man,  and  Sexual  Selection. 

Jermyn  Street,  Feb.  20,  1871. 
My  dear  Darwin — Best  thanks  for  your  new  book,  a  copy 
of  which  I  find  awaiting  me  this  morning.  But  I  wish  you 
would  not  bring  your  books  out  when  I  am  so  busy  with  all  sorts 
of  things.  You  know  I  can't  show  my  face  anywhere  in  society 
without  having  read  them — and  I  consider  it  too  bad. 

*  On  the  other  hand,  he  thought  it  right  and  proper  for  officials,  in 
scientific  as  in  other  departments,  to  accept  such  honours,  as  givinjj 
them  official  power  and  status.     In  his  own  case,  while  refusing  all 


1871  LETTER   TO   ROSCOE  387 

No  doubt,  too,  it  is  full  of  suggestions  just  like  that  I  have 
hit  upon  by  chance  at  p.  212  of  vol.  i.,  which  connects  the 
periodicity  of  vital  phenomena  with  antecedent  conditions. 

Fancy  lunacy,  &c.,  coming  out  of  the  primary  fact  that  one's 
«th  ancestor  lived  between  tide-marks!  I  declare  it's  the 
grandest  suggestion  I  have  heard  of  for  an  age. 

I  have  been  working  like  a  horse  for  the  last  fortnight,  with 
the  fag  end  of  influenza  hanging  about  me — and  I  am  improv- 
ing under  the  process,  which  shows  what  a  good  tonic  work  is. 

I  9hall  try  if  I  can't  pick  out  from  "  Sexual  Selection  "  some 
practical  hint  for  the  improvement  of  gutter-babies,  and  bring 
in  a  resolution  thereupon  at  the  School  Board. — Ever  yours 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

This  year  also  saw  the  inception  of  a  scheme  for  a  series 
of  science  primers,  under  the  joint  editorship  of  Professors 
Huxley,  Roscoe,  and  Balfour  Stewart.  Huxley  undertook 
the  Introductory  Primer,  but  it  progressed  slowly  owing  to 
pressure  of  other  work,  and  was  not  actually  finished  till 
1880. 

26  Abbey  Place,  June  29,  187 1. 

My  dear  Roscoe — If  you  could  see  the  minutes  of  the  Pro- 
ceedings of  the  Aid  to  Science  Commission,  the  Contagious  Dis- 
eases Commission  and  the  School  Board  (to  say  nothing  of  a 
lecture  to  Schoolmasters  every  morning)  you  would  forgive  me 
for  not  having  written  to  you  before. 

But  now  that  I  have  had  a  little  time  to  look  at  it,  I  hasten 
to  say  that  your  chemical  primer  appears  to  me  to  be  admirable 
— ^just  what  is  wanted. 

I  enclose  the  sketch  for  my  Primer  primus.  You  will  see 
the  bearing  of  it,  rough  as  it  is.  When  it  touches  upon  chemical 
matters,  it  would  deal  with  them  in  a  more  rudimentary  fashion 
than  yours  does,  and  only  prepare  the  minds  of  the  fledglings 
for  you. 

I  send  you  a  copy  of  the  Report  of  the  Education  Committee, 
the  resolutions  based  on  which  I  am  now  slowly  getting  passed 
by  our  Board.  The  adoption  of  (c)  among  the  essential  sub- 
simple  titular  honours,  he  accepted  the  Privy  Councillorship,  because, 
though  incidentally  carrying  a  title,  it  was  an  office ;  and  an  office  in 
virtue  of  which  a  man  of  science  might,  in  theory  at  least,  be  called 
upon  to  act  as  responsible  adviser  to  the  Government,  should  special 
occasion  arise. 


388 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxv 


jects  has,  I  hope,  secured  the  future  of  Elementary  Science  in 
London.  Cannot  you  get  as  much  done  in  Manchester? — Ever 
yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Sir  Charles  Lyell  was  now  nearly  74  years  old,  and 
though  he  lived  four  years  longer,  age  was  beginning  to 
tell  even  upon  his  vigorous  powers.  A  chance  meeting  with 
him  elicited  the  following  letter : — 

26  Abbey  Place,  July  30.  1871. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  met  Lyell  in  Waterloo  Place  to-day 
walking  with  Carrick  Moore — and  although  what  you  said  the 
other  day  had  prepared  me,  I  was  greatly  shocked  at  his  ap- 
pearance, and  still  more  at  his  speech.  There  is  no  doubt  it  is 
aflfected  in  the  way  you  describe,  and  the  fact  gives  me  very 
sad  forebodings  about  him.  The  Fates  send  me  a  swift  and 
speedy  end  whenever  my  time  comes.  I  think  there  is  nothing 
so  lamentable  as  the  spectacle  of  the  wreck  of  a  once  clear  and 
vigorous  mind ! 

I  am  glad  Frank  enjoyed  his  visit  to  us.  He  is  a  great 
favourite  here,  and  I  hope  he  will  understand  that  he  is  free 
of  the  house.  It  was  the  greatest  fun  to  see  Jess  and  Mady  * 
on  their  dignity  with  him.  No  more  kissing,  I  can  tell  you. 
Miss  Mady  was  especially  sublime. 

Six  out  of  our  seven  children  have  the  whooping-cough. 
Need  I  say  therefore  that  the  wife  is  enjoying  herself? 

With  best  regards  to  Mrs.  Darwin  and  your  daughter  (and 
aflfectionate  love  to  Polly)  believe  me. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  purchase  of  the  microscope,  already  referred  to,  was 
the  subject  of  another  letter  to  Dr.  Dohm,  of  which  only 
the  concluding  paragraph  about  the  School  Board,  is  of 
general  interest.  Unfortunately  the  English  microscope  did 
not  turn  out  a  success,  as  compared  to  the  work  of  the 
Jena  opticians :  this  is  the  "  optical  Sadowa  "  of  the  second 
letter. 

I  fancy  from  what  you  wrote  to  my  wife  that  there  has  been 
some  report  of  my  doings  about  the  School  Board  in  Germany. 
So  I  send  you  the  number  of  the  Contemporary  Review  \  for 

*  Aged  13  and  12  respectively. 

t  Containing  his  article  on  **The  School  Boards,"  etc. 


i87i  LETTERS   TO   DOHRN  389 

December  that  you  may  see  what  line  I  have  really  taken. 
Fanatics  on  both  sides  abuse  me,  so  I  think  I  must  be  right. 

When  is  this  infernal  war  to  come  to  an  end?  I  hold  for 
Germany  as  always,  but  I  wish  she  would  make  peace. — With 
best  wishes  for  the  New  Year. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

26  Abbey  Place,  July  7,  1871. 

My  dear  Dohrn — I  have  received  your  packet,  and  I  will 
take  care  that  your  Report  is  duly  presented  to  the  Association. 
But  the  "  Happy  Family  "  in  general,  and  myself  in  particular, 
are  very  sorry  you  cannot  come  to  Scotland.  We  had  begun 
to  count  upon  it,  and  the  children  are  immeasurably  disgusted 
with  the  Insects  which  will  not  lay  their  eggs  at  the  right 
time. 

You  have  become  acclimatised  to  my  bad  behaviour  in  the 
matter  of  correspondence,  so  I  shall  not  apologise  for  being  in 
arrear.  I  have  been  frightfully  hard-worked  with  two  Royal 
Commissions  and  the  School  Board  all  sitting  at  once,  but  I  am 
none  the  worse,  and  things  are  getting  into  shape — which  is^'a 
satisfaction  for  one's  trouble.  I  look  forward  hopefully  towards 
getting  back  to  my  ordinary  work  next  year. 

Your  penultimate  letter  was  very  interesting  to  me,  but  the 
glimpses  into  your  new  views  which  it  affords  are  very  tanta- 
lising— and  I  want  more.  What  you  say  about  the  development 
of  the  Amnion  in  your  last  letter  still  more  nearly  brought 
"  Donner  und  Blitz  I  "  to  my  lips — and  I  shall  look  out  anxiously 
for  your  new  facts.  Lankester  tells  me  you  have  been  giving 
lectures  on  your  views.    I  wish  I  had  been  there  to  hear. 

He  is  helping  me  as  Demonstrator  in  a  course  of  instruction 
in  Biology  which  I  am  giving  to  Schoolmasters — ^with  the  view 
of  converting  them  into  scientific  missionaries  to  convert  the 
Christian  Heathen  of  these  islands  to  the  true  faith. 

I  am  afraid  that  the  English  microscope  turned  out  to  be  by 
no  means  worth  the  money  and  trouble  you  bestowed  upon  it. 
But  the  glory  of  such  an  optical  Sadowa  should  count  for  some- 
thing !  I  wish  that  you  would  get  your  Jena  man  to  supply  me 
with  one  of  his  best  objectives  if  the  price  is  not  ruinous — I 
should  like  to  compare  it  with  my  -^y  in.  of  Ross.* 

*  In  this  connection  it  may  be  noted  that  he  himself  invented  a 
combination  microscope  for  laboratory  use,  still  made  by  Crouch  the 
optician.     (See/<7«r>f.  Queckett  Aficr,  Club^  vol.  v.  p.  144.) 


390 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxv 


All  our  children  but  Jessie  have  the  whooping-cough — Per- 
tussis— I  don't  know  your  German  name  for  it — It  is  distress- 
ing enough  for  them,  but,  I  think,  still  worse  for  their  mother. 
However,  there  are  no  serious  symptoms,  and  I  hope  the  change 
of  air  will  set  them  right 

They  all  join  with  me  in  best  wishes  and  regrets  that  you 
are  not  coming.  Won't  you  change  your  mind?  We  start  on 
July  31st— Ever  yours  faithfully,  ^   ^   Huxley. 


The  summer  holiday  of  1871  was  spent  at  St  Andrews, 
a  place  rather  laborious  of  approach  at  that  time,  with  all 
the  impedimenta  of  a  large  and  young  family,  but  chosen 
on  account  of  its  nearness  to  Edinburgh,  where  the  British 
Association  met  that  year.  I  well  remember  the  night 
journey  of  some  ten  or  elevein  hours,  the  freshness  of  the 
early  morning  at  Edinburgh,  the  hasty  excursion  with  my 
father  up  the  hill  from  the  station  as  far  as  the  old  High 
Street.  The  return  journey,  however,  was  made  easier  by 
the  kindness  of  Dr.  Matthews  Duncan,  who  put  up  the 
whole  family  for  a  night,  so  as  to  break  the  journey. 

We  stayed  at  Castlemount,  now  belonging  to  Miss 
Paton,  just  opposite  the  ruined  castle.  Among  other  vis- 
itors to  St.  Andrews  known  to  my  father  were  Professors 
Tait  and  Crum  Brown,  who  inveigled  him  into  making  trial 
of  the  "  Royal  and  Ancient "  game,  which  then,  as  now, 
was  the  staple  resource  of  the  famous  little  city.  I  have  a 
vivid  recollection  of  his  being  hopelessly  bunkered  three  or 
four  holes  from  home,  and  can  testify  that  he  bore  the  moral 
strain  with  more  than  usual  calm  as  compared  with  the 
generality  of  golfers.  Indeed,  despite  his  naturally  quick 
temper  and  his  four  years  of  naval  service  at  a  time  when, 
perhaps,  the  traditions  of  a  former  generation  had  not 
wholly  died  out,  he  had  a  special  aversion  to  the  use  of 
expletives ;  and  the  occasional  appearance  of  a  strong  word 
in  his  letters  must  be  put  down  to  a  simple  literary  use 
which  he  would  have  studiously  avoided  in  conversation. 
A  curious  physical  result  followed  the  vigour  with  which 
he  threw  himself  into  the  unwonted  recreation.  For  the 
last  twenty  years  his  only  physical  exercise  had  been  walk- 


i87i  "MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS"  391 

ing,  and  now  his  arms  went  black  and  blue  under  the  mus- 
cular strain,  as  if  they  had  been  bruised. 

But  the  holiday  was  by  no  means  spent  entirely  in 
recreation.  One  week  was  devoted  to  the  British  Associa- 
tion ;  another  to  the  examination  of  some  interesting  fossils 
at  Elgin;  while  the  last  three  weeks  were  occupied  in 
writing  two  long  articles,  "  Mr.  Darwin's  Critics,"  and  the 
address  entitled  "Administrative  Nihilism"  referred  to 
above  (p.  384),  as  well  as  a  review  of  Dana's  Crinoids.  The 
former,  which  appeared  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for 
November  (Coll.  Ess.  ii.  120-187)  was  a  review  of  (i)  Con- 
tributions to  the  Theory  of  Natural  Selection,  by  A.  R.  Wal- 
lace, (2)  The  Genesis  of  Species,  by  St.  George  Mivart, 
F.R.S.,  and  (3)  an  article  in  the  Quarterly  for  July  1871,  on 
Darwin's  Descent  of  Man. 

"  I  am  Darwin's  bull-dog,"  he  once  said,  and  the  Quar- 
terly Reviewer's  treatment  of  Darwin,  "  alike  unjust  and  un- 
becoming," provoked  him  into  immediate  action.  "  I  am 
about  sending  you,"  he  writes  to  Haeckel  on  Nov.  2,  "  a 
little  review  of  some  of  Darwinjs  critics.  The  dogs  have 
been  barking  at  his  heels  too  much  of  late."  Apart  from 
this  stricture,  however,  he  notes  the  "  happy  change  "  which 
"  has  come  over  Mr.  Darwin's  critics.  The  mixture  of  ig- 
norance and  insolence  which  at  first  characterised  a  large 
proportion  of  the  attacks  with  which  he  was  assailed,  is  no 
longer  the  sad  distinction  of  anti-Darwinian  criticism." 
Notes  too  "  that,  in  a  dozen  years,  the  Origin  of  Species  has 
worked  as  complete  a  revolution  in  biological  science  as  the 
Principia  did  in  astronomy — ^and  it  has  done  so,  because, 
in  the  words  of  Helmholtz,  it  contains  an  '  essentially  new 
creative  thought.' " 

The  essay  is  particularly  interesting  as  giving  evidence 
of  his  skill  and  knowledge  in  dealing  with  psychology,  as 
against  the  Quarterly  Reviewer,  and  even  with  such  an  un- 
likely subject  as  scholastic  metaphysics,  so  that,  by  an  odd 
turn  of  events,  he  appeared  in  the  novel  character  of  a 
defender  of  Catholic  orthodoxy  against  an  attempt  from 
within  that  Church  to  prove  that  its  teachings  have  in  reality 
always  been  in  harmony  with  the  requirements  of  modern 
26 


392 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxv 


science.  For  Mr.  Mivart,  while  twitting  the  generality  of 
men  of  science  with  their  ignorance  of  the  real  doctrines  of 
his  church,  gave  a  reference  to  the  Jesuit  theologian  Suarez, 
the  latest  great  representative  of  scholasticism,  as  following 
St.  Augustine  in  asserting,  not  direct,  but  derivative  crea- 
tion, that  is  to  say,  evolution  from  primordial  matter  endued 
with  certain  powers.  Startled  by  this  statement,  Huxley 
investigated  the  works  of  the  learned  Jesuit,  and  found  not 
only  that  Mr.  Mivart's  reference  to  the  Metaphysical  Dis- 
putations was  not  to  the  point,  but  that  in  the  "  Tractatus 
de  opere  sex  Dierum,"  Suarez  expressly  and  emphatically 
rejects  this  doctrine  and  reprehends  Augustine  for  assert- 
ing it. 

By  great  good  luck  (he  writes  to  Darwin  from  St.  Andrews) 
there  is  an  excellent  library  here,  with  a  good  copy  of  Suarez,  in 
a  dozen  big  folios.  Among  these  I  dived,  to  the  great  astonish- 
ment of  the  librarian,  and  looking  into  them  as  "  the  careful 
robin  eyes  the  delver's  toil "  (vide  Idylls),  I  carried  off  the  two 
venerable  clasped  volumes  which  were  most  promising. 

So  I  have  come  out  in  the  new  character  of  a  defender  of 
Catholic  orthodoxy,  and  upset  Mivart  out  of  the  mouth  of  his 
own  prophet. 

Darwin  himself  was  more  than  pleased  with  the  article, 
and  wrote  enthusiastically  (see  Life  and  Letters,  iii.  148-150). 
A  few  of  his  generous  words  may  be  quoted  to  show  the 
rate  at  which  he  valued  his  friend's  championship. 

What  a  wonderful  man  you  are  to  grapple  with  those  old 
metaphysico-divinity  books.  .  .  .  The  pendulum  is  now  swinging 
against  our  side,  but  I  feel  positive  it  will  soon  swing  the  other 
way;  and  no  mortal  man  will  do  half  as  much  as  you  in  giving 
it  a  start  in  the  right  direction,  as  you  did  at  the  first  com- 
mencement. 

And  again,  after  "  mounting  climax  on  climax,"  he  con- 
tinues : — "  I  must  tell  you  what  Hooker  said  to  me  a  few 
years  ago.  *  When  I  read  Huxley,  I  feel  quite  infantile  in 
intellect' " 

This  sketch  of  what  constituted  his  holiday — ^and  it  was 
not  very  much  busier  than  many  another  holiday — may 
possibly  suggest  what  his  busy  time  must  have  been  like. 


i87i  BREAKDOWN   IN   HEALTH  393 

Till  the  end  of  the  year  the  immense  amount  of  work 
did  not  apparently  tell  upon  him.  He  rejoiced  in  it.  In 
December  he  remarked  to  his  wife  that  with  all  his  different 
irons  in  the  fire,  he  had  never  felt  his  mind  clearer  or  his 
vigour  greater.  Within  a  week  he  broke  down  quite  sud- 
denly, and  could  neither  work  nor  think.  He  refers  to  this 
in  the  following  letter : — 

Jermyn  Street,  Dec,  22,  1871. 

My  dear  Johnny — ^You  are  certainly  improving.  As  a 
practitioner  in  the  use  of  cold  steel  myself,  I  have  read  your 
letter  in  to-day*s  Nature,  "  mit  Ehrfurcht  und  Bewunderung." 
And  the  best  evidence  of  the  greatness  of  your  achievement  is 
that  it  extracts  this  expression  of  admiration  from  a  poor  devil 
whose  brains  and  body  are  in  a  colloid  state,  and  who  is  off  to 
Brighton  for  a  day  or  two  this  afternoon. 

God  be  with  thee,  my  son,  and  strengthen  the  contents  of 
thy  gall-bladder !— Ever  thine,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

PS. — Seriously,  I  am  glad  that  at  last  a  protest  has  been 
raised  against  the  process  of  anonymous  self-praise  to  which 
our  friend  is  given.  I  spoke  to  Smith  the  other  day  about  that 
dose  of  it  in  the  "  Quarterly  "  article  on  Spirit-rapping. 


CHAPTER   XXVI 

1872 

Dyspepsia,  that  most  distressing  of  maladies,  .had  laid 
firm  hold  upon  him.  He  was  compelled  to  take  entire  rest 
for  a  time.  But  his  first  holiday  produced  no  lasting  effect, 
and  in  the  summer  he  was  again  very  ill.  Then  the  worry 
of  a  troublesome  lawsuit  in  connection  with  the  building 
of  his  new  house  intensified  both  bodily  illness  and  mental 
depression.  He  had  great  fears  of  being  saddled  with  heavy 
costs  at  the  moment  when  he  was  least  capable  of  meeting 
any  new  expense — hardly  able  even  to  afford  another  much- 
needed  spell  of  rest.  But  in  his  case,  as  in  others,  at  this 
critical  moment  the  circle  of  fellow-workers  in  science  to 
whom  he  was  bound  by  ties  of  friendship,  resolved  that  he 
should  at  least  not  lack  the  means  of  recovery.  In  their 
name  Charles  Darwin  wrote  him  the  following  letter,  of 
which  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  it  does  more  honour  to 
him  who  sent  it  or  to  him  who  received  it : — 

Down,  Beckenham,  Kent,  April  23,  1873. 
My  dear  Huxley  —  I  have  been  askecf  by  some  of  your 
friends  (eighteen  in  number)  to  inform  you  that  they  have 
placed  through  Robarts,  Lubbock  &  Company,  the  sum  of  £2100 
to  your  account  at  your  bankers.  We  have  done  this  to  enable 
you  to  get  such  complete  rest  as  you  may  require  for  the  re- 
establishment  of  your  health;  and  in  doing  this  we  are  con- 
vinced that  we  act  for  the  public  interest,  as  well  as  in  accord- 
ance with  our  most  earnest  desires.  Let  me  assure  you  that 
we  are  all  your  warm  personal  friends,  and  that  there  is  not  a 
stranger  or  mere  acquaintance  amongst  us.  If  you  could  have 
heard  what  was  said,  or  could  have  read  what  was,  as  I  believe, 
our  inmost  thoughts,  you  would  know  that  we  all  feel  towards 

394 


i87a  AT  GIBRALTAR  395 

you,  as  we  should  to  an  honoured  and  much  loved  brother.  I 
am  sure  that  you  will  return  this  feeling,  and  will  therefore 
be  glad  to  give  us  the  opportunity  of  aiding  you  in  some  degree, 
as  this  will  be  a  happiness  to  us  to  the  last  day  of  our  lives. 
Let  me  add  that  our  plan  occurred  to  several  of  your  friends  at 
nearly  the  same  time  and  quite  independently  of  one  another. 
— My  dear  Huxley,  your  affectionate  friend, 

Charles  Darwin. 

It  was  a  poignant  moment.  "What  have  I  done  to 
deserve  this  ?  "  he  exclaimed.  The  relief  from  anxiety,  so 
generously  proffered,  entirely  overcame  him;  and  for  the 
first  time,  he  allowed  himself  to  confess  that  in  the  long 
struggle  against  ill-health,  he  had  been  beaten;  but,  as  he 
said,  only  enough  to  teach  him  humility. 

His  first  trip  in  search  of  health  was  in  1872,  when  he 
obtained  two  months'  leave  of  absence,  and  prepared  to  go 
to  the  Mediterranean.  His  lectures  to  women  on  Physi- 
ology at  South  Kensington  were  taken  over  by  Dr.  Michael 
Foster,  who  had  already  acted  as  his  substitute  in  the  Ful- 
lerian  course  of  1868.  But  even  on  this  cruise  after  health 
he  was  not  altogether  free  from  business.  The  stores  of 
biscuit  at  Gibraltar  and  Malta  were  infested  with  a  small 
grub  and  its  cocoons.  Complaints  to  the  home  authorities 
were  met  by  the  answer  that  the  stores  were  prepared  from 
the  purest  materials  and  sent  out  perfectly  free  from  the 
pest.  Discontent  among  the  men  was  growing  serious, 
when  he  was  requested  by  the  Admiralty  to  investigate  the 
nature  of  the  grub  and  the  best  means  of  preventing  its 
ravages.  In  the  end  he  found  that  the  biscuits  were  packed 
within  range  of  stocks  of  newly  arrived,  unpurified  cocoa, 
from  which  the  eggs  were  blown  into  the  stores  while  being 
packed,  and  there  hatched  out.  Thereafter  the  packing  was 
done  in  another  place  and  the  complaints  ceased. 

Jan,  3,  1872. 

My  dear  Dohrn — It  is  true  enough  that  I  am  somewhat 
"erkrankt,"  though  beyond  general  weariness,  incapacity  and 
disgust  with  things  in  general,  I  do  not  precisely  know  what 
is  the  matter  with  me. 

Unwillingly,  I  begin  to  suspect  that  I  overworked  myself 


396  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

last  year.  Doctors  talk  seriously  to  me,  and  declare  that  all 
sorts  of  wonderful  things  will  happen  if  I  do  not  take  some 
more  efficient  rest  than  I  have  had  for  a  long  time.  My  wife 
adds  her  quota  of  persuasion  and  admonition,  until  I  really  begin 
to  think  I  must  do  something,  if  only  to  have  peace. 

What  if  I  were  to  come  and  look  you  up  in  Naples,  some- 
where in  February,  as  soon  as  my  lectures  are  over? 

The  "one-plate  system"  might  cure  me  of  my  incessant 
dyspeptic  nausea.  A  detestable  grub— larva  of  Ephestia  elatella 
—has  been  devouring  Her  Majesty's  stores  of  biscuits  at  Gibral- 
tar. I  have  had  to  look  into  his  origin,  history,  and  best  way 
of  circumventing  him — and  maybe  I  shall  visit  Gibraltar  and 
perhaps  Malta.  In  that  case,  you  will  see  me  turn  up  some  of 
these  days  at  the  Palazzo  Torlonia. 

Herbert  Spencer  has  written  a  friendly  attack  on  "  Adminis- 
trative Nihilism,"  which  I  will  send  you ;  in  the  same  number  of 
the  Fortnightly  there  is  an  absurd  epicene  splutter  on  the  same 
subject  by  Mill's  step-daughter,  Miss  Helen  Taylor.  I  intended 
to  publish  the  paper  separately,  with  a  note  about  Spencer's 
criticism,  but  I  have  had  no  energy  nor  faculty  to  do  anything 
lately. 

Tell  Lankester,  with  best  regards,  that  I  believe  the  teach- 
ing of  teachers  in  1872  is  arranged,  and  that  I  shall  look  for 
his  help  in  due  course. 

The  "  Happy  family  "  have  had  the  measles  since  you  saw 
them,  but  they  are  well  again. 

I  write  in  Jermyn  Street,  so  they  cannot  send  messages; 
otherwise  there  would  be  a  chorus  from  them  and  the  wife  of 
good  wishes  and  kind  remembrances. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

He  left  Southampton  on  January  11,  in  the  Malta.  On 
the  i6th,  he  notes  in  his  diary,  "  I  was  up  just  in  time  to 
see  the  great  portal  of  the  Mediterranean  well.  It  was  a 
lovely  morning,  and  nothing  could  be  grander  than  Ape 
Hill  on  one  side  and  the  Rock  on  the  other,  looking  like 
great  lions  or  sphinxes  on  each  side  of  a  gateway." 

The  morning  after  his  arrival  he  breakfasted  with  Ad- 
miral Hornby,  who  sent  him  over  to  Tangier  in  the  Helicon^ 
giving  the  Bishop  of  Gibraltar  a  passage  at  the  same  time. 
This  led  him  to  note  down,  "  How  the  naval  men  love 
Baxter  and  all  his  works."    A  letter  from  Dr.  Hooker  to 


i872  IN   EGYPT  397 

Sir  John  Hay  ensured  him  a  most  hospitable  welcome, 
though  continual  rain  spoiled  his  excursions.  On  the  21st 
he  returned  to  Gibraltar,  leaving  three  days  later  in  the 
Nyanza  for  Alexandria,  which  was  reached  on  February  i. 
At  that  "  muddy  hole  "  he  landed  in  pouring  rain,  and  it 
was  not  till  he  reached  Cairo  the  following  day  that  he  at 
last  got  into  his  longed-for  sunshine. 

Seeing  that  three  of  his  eight  weeks  had  been  spent  in 
merely  getting  to  sunshine,  his  wife  and  doctor  conspired  to 
apply  for  a  third  month  of  leave,  which  was  immediately 
granted,  so  that  he  now  had  time  to  go  up  the  Nile  as  far 
as  Assouan  in  that  most  restful  of  conveyances,  a  dahabiah. 

Cairo  more  than  answered  his  expectations.  He  stayed 
here  till  the  13th,  making  several  excursions  in  company 
with  Sir  W.  Gregory,  notably  to  Boulak  Museum,  where 
he  particularly  notes  the  "man  with  ape"  from  Memphis; 
and,  of  course,  the  pyramids,  of  which  he  remarks  that 
Cephren's  is  cased  at  the  top  with  limestone,  not  granite. 
His  note-book  and  sketch-book  show  that  he  was  equally 
interested  in  archaeology,  in  the  landscape  and  scenes  of 
everyday  life,  and  in  the  peculiar  geographical  and  geologi- 
cal features  of  the  country.  His  first  impression  of  the 
Delta  was  its  resemblance  to  Belgium  and  Lincolnshire. 
He  has  sections  and  descriptions  of  the  Mokatta  hill,  and 
the  windmill  mound,  with  a  general  panorama  of  the  sur- 
rounding country  and  an  explanation  of  it.  He  remarks  at 
Memphis  how  the  unburnt  brick  of  which  the  mounds  are 
made  up  had  in  many  places  become  remanie  into  a  strati- 
fied deposit — distinguishable  from  Nile  mud  chiefly  by  the 
pottery  fragments — and  notes  the  bearing  of  this  fact  on 
the  Cairo  mounds.  It  is  the  same  on  his  trip  up  the  Nile ; 
he  jots  down  the  geology  whenever  opportunity  offered; 
remarks,  as  indication  of  the  former  height  of  the  river,  a 
high  mud-bank  beyond  Edfou,  and  near  Assouan  a  pot- 
hole in  the  granite  fifty  feet  above  the  present  level.  Here 
is  a  detailed  description  of  the  tomb  of  Aahmes;  there  a 
river-scene  beside  the  pyramid  of  Meidum ;  or  vivid  sketches 
of  vulture  and  jackal  at  a  meal  in  the  desert,  the  jackal  in 
possession  of  the  carcass,  the  vulture  impatiently  waiting 


398  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

his  good  pleasure  for  the  last  scraps ;  of  the  natives  working" 
at  the  endless  shadoofs;  of  a  group  of  listeners  around  a 
professional  story-teller — ^unfinished,  for  he  was  observed 
sketching  them. 

Egypt  left  a  profound  impression  upon  him.  His 
artistic  delight  in  it  apart,  the  antiquities  and  geology  of 
the  country  were  a  vivid  illustration  to  his  trained  eye  of  the 
history  of  man  and  the  influence  upon  him  of  the  surround- 
ing country,  the  link  between  geography  and  history. 

He  left  behind  him  for  a  while  a  most  unexpected 
memorial  of  his  visit.  A  friend  not  long  after  going  to  the 
pyramids,  was  delighted  to  find  himself  thus  adjured  by  a 
donkey-boy,  who  tried  to  cut  out  his  rival  with  "  Not  him 
donkey,  sah ;  him  donkey  bad,  sah ;  my  donkey  good ;  my 
donkey  'Fessor-uxley  donkey,  sah."  It  appears  that  the 
Cairo  donkey-boys  have  a  way  of  naming  their  animals  after 
celebrities  whom  they  have  borne  on  their  backs. 

While  at  Thebes,  on  his  way  down  the  river  again,  he 
received  news  of  the  death  of  the  second  son  of  Matthew 
Arnold,  to  whom  he  wrote  the  following  letter : — 

Thebes,  March  lo,  1872. 

My  dear  Arnold— I  cannot  tell  you  how  shocked  I  was  to 
see  in  the  papers  we  received  yesterday  the  announcement  of 
the  terrible  blow  which  has  fallen  upon  Mrs.  Arnold  and  your- 
self. 

Your  poor  boy  looked  such  a  fine  manly  fellow  the  last  time 
I  saw  him,  when  we  dined  at  your  house,  that  I  had  to  read  the 
paragraph  over  and  over  again  before  I  could  bring  myself  to 
believe  what  I  read.  And  it  is  such  a  grievous  opening  of  a 
wound  hardly  yet  healed  that  I  hardly  dare  to  think  of  the 
grief  which  must  have  bowed  down  Mrs.  Arnold  and  yourself. 

I  hardly  know  whether  I  do  well  in  writing  to  you.  If  such 
trouble  bcfel  me  there  are  very  few  people  in  the  world  from 
whom  I  could  bear  even  sympathy — ^but  you  would  be  one  of 
them,  and  therefore  I  hope  that  you  will  forgive  a  condolence 
which  will  reach  you  so  late  as  to  disturb  rather  than  soothe, 
for  the  sake  of  the  hearty  affection  which  dictates  it. 

My  wife  has  told  me  of  the  very  kind  letter  you  wrote  her. 
I  was  thoroughly  broken  down  when  I  left  England,  and  did 
not  get  much  better  until  I  fell  into  the  utter  and  absolute 


1872  LETTER   TO   TYNDALL  jqq 

laziness  of  dahabieh  life.  A  month  of  that  has  completely  set 
me  up.  I  am  as  well  as  ever;  and  though  very  grateful  to  Old 
Nile  for  all  that  he  has  done  for  me — not  least  for  a  whole  uni- 
verse of  new  thoughts  and  pictures  of  life  —  I  begin  to  feel 
strongly 

*  the  need  of  a  world  of  men  for  me.* 

But  I  am  not  going  to  overwork  myself  again.  Pray  make  my 
kindest  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Arnold,  and  believe  me,  always 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Leaving  Assouan  on  March  3,  and  Cairo  on  the  i8th, 
he  returned  by  way  of  Messina  to  Naples,  taking  a  day  at 
Catania  to  look  at  Etna.  At  Naples  he  found  his  friend 
Dohm  was  absent,  and  his  place  as  host  was  filled  by  his 
father.  Vesuvius  was  ascended,  Pozzuoli  and  Pompeii  vis- 
ited, and  two  days  spent  in  Rome. 

Hotel  de  Grande  Bretagne,  Naples. 
March  31,  1872. 

My  dear  Tyndall — Your  very  welcome  letter  did  not  reach 
me  until  the  i8th  of  March,  when  I  returned  to  Cairo  from  my 
expedition  to  Assouan.  Like  Johnny  Gilpin,  I  "  little  thought, 
when  I  set  out,  of  running  such  a  rig";  but  while  at  Cairo  I 
fell  in  with  Ossory  of  the  Athenaeum,  and  a  very  pleasant  fellow, 
Charles  Ellis,  who  had  taken  a  dahabieh,  and  were  about  to 
start  up  the  Nile.  They  invited  me  to  take  possession  of  a 
vacant  third  cabin,  and  I  accepted  their  hospitality,  with  the 
intention  of  going  as  far  as  Thebes  and  returning  on  my  own 
hook.  But  when  we  got  to  Thebes  I  found  there  was  no  getting 
away  again  without  much  more  exposure  and  fatigue  than  I 
felt  justified  in  facing  just  then,  and  as  my  friends  showed  no 
disposition  to  be  rid  of  me,  I  stuck  to  the  boat,  and  only  left 
them  on  the  return  voyage  at  Rodu,  which  is  the  terminus  of 
the  railway,  about  150  miles  from  Cairo. 

We  had  an  unusually  quick  journey,  as  I  was  little  more 
than  a  month  away  from  Cairo,  and  as  my  companions  made 
themselves  very  agreeable,  it  was  very  pleasant.  I  was  not 
particularly  well  at  first,  but  by  degrees  the  utter  rest  of  this 
"  always  afternoon  "  sort  of  life  did  its  work,  and  I  am  as  well 
and  vigorous  now  as  ever  I  was  in  my  life. 

I  should  have  been  home  within  a  fortnight  of  the  time  I 
had  originally  fixed.    This  would  have  been  ample  time  to  have 


400 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 


enabled  me  to  fulfil  all  the  engagements  I  had  made  before 
starting;  and  Donnelly  had  given  me  to  understand  that  "My 
Lords  "  would  not  trouble  their  heads  about  my  stretching  my 
official  leave.  Nevertheless  I  was  very  glad  to  find  the  official 
extension  (which  was  the  eflFect  of  my  wife's  and  your  and 
Bence  Jones's  friendly  conspiracy)  awaiting  me  at  Cairo.  A 
rapid  journey  home  via  Brindisi  might  have  rattled  my  brains 
back  into  the  colloid  state  in  which  they  were  when  I  left  Eng- 
land. Looking  back  through  the  past  six  months  I  begin  to  see 
that  I  have  had  a  narrow  escape  from  a  bad  break-down,  and  I 
am  full  of  good  resolutions. 

As  the  first-fruit  of  these  you  see  that  I  have  given  up  the 
school-board,  and  I  mean  to  keep  clear  of  all  that  semi-political 
work  hereafter.  I  see  that  Sandon  (whom  I  met  at  Alexandria) 
and  Miller  have  followed  my  example,  and  that  Lord  Lawrence 
is  likely  to  go.    What  a  skedaddle ! 

It  seems  very  hard  to  escape,  however.  Since  my  arrival 
here,  on  taking  up  the  Times  I  saw  a  paragraph  about  the  Lord 
Rectorship  of  St.  Andrews.  After  enumerating  a  lot  of  candi- 
dates for  that  honour,  the  paragraph  concluded,  "  But  we  under- 
stand that  at  present  Professor  Huxley  has  the  best  chance." 
It  is  really  too  bad  if  anyone  has  been  making  use  of  my  name 
without  my  permission.  But  I  don't  know  what  to  do  about 
it.  I  had  half  a  mind  to  write  to  Tulloch  to  tell  him  that  I 
can't  and  won't  take  any  such  office,  but  I  should  look  rather 
foolish  if  he  replied  that  it  was  a  mere  newspaper  report,  and 
that  nobody  intended  to  put  me  up. 

Egypt  interested  me  profoundly,  but  I  must  reserve  the  tale 
of  all  I  did  and  saw  there  for  word  of  mouth.  From  Alexandria 
I  went  to  Messina,  and  thence  made  an  excursion  along  the 
lovely  Sicilian  coast  to  Catania  and  Etna.  The  old  giant  was 
half  covered  with  snow,  and  this  fact,  which  would  have  tempted 
you  to  go  to  the  top,  stopped  me.  But  I  went  to  the  Val  del 
Bove,  whence  all  the  great  lava  streams  have  flowed  for  the 
last  two  centuries,  and  feasted  my  eyes  with  its  rugged  grandeur. 
From  Messina  I  came  on  here,  and  had  the  great  good  fortune 
to  find  Vesuvius  in  eruption.  Before  this  fact  the  vision  of 
good  Bence  Jones  forbidding  much  exertion  vanished  into  thin 
air,  and  on  Thursday  up  I  went  in  company  with  Ray  Lankester 
and  my  friend  Dohrn's  father,  Dohrn  himself  being  unluckily 
away.  We  had  a  glorious  day,  and  did  not  descend  till  late  at 
night.  The  great  crater  was  not  very  active,  and  contented 
itself  with  throwing  out  great  clouds  of  steam  and  volleys  of 


1872  LETTER  TO  TYNDALL  401 

red-hot  stones  now  and  then.  These  were  thrown  towards  the 
south-west  side  of  the  cone,  so  that  it  was  practicable  to  walk 
all  round  the  northern  and  eastern  lip,  and  look  down  into  the 
Hell  Gate.  I  wished  you  were  there  to  enjoy  the  sight  as  much 
as  I  did.  No  lava  was  issuing  from  the  great  crater,  but  on 
the  north  side  of  this,  a  little  way  below  the  top,  an  independent 
cone  had  established  itself  as  the  most  charming  little  pocket- 
volcano  imaginable.  It  could  not  have  been  more  than  100 
feet  high,  and  at  the  top  was  a  crater  not  more  than  six  or 
seven  feet  across.  Out  of  this,  with  a  noise  exactly  resembling 
a  blast  furnace  and  a  slowly-working  high  pressure  steam  engine 
combined,  issued  a  violent  torrent  of  steam  and  fragments  of 
semi-fluid  lava  as  big  as  one's  Hst,  and  sometimes  bigger.  These 
shot  up  sometimes  as  much  as  100  feet,  and  then  fell  down  on 
the  sides  of  the  little  crater,  which  could  be  approached  within 
fifty  feet  without  any  danger.  As  darkness  set  in,  the  spectacle 
was  most  strange.  The  fiery  stream  found  a  lurid  reflection 
in  the  slowly-drifting  steam  cloud,  which  overhung  it,  while  the 
red-hot  stones  which  shot  through  the  cloud  shone  strangely 
beside  the  quiet  stars  in  a  moonlefls  sky. 

Not  from  the  top  of  this  cinder  cone,  but  from  its  side,  a 
couple  of  hundred  feet  down,  a  stream  of  lava  issued.  At  first 
it  was  not  more  than  a  couple  of  feet  wide,  but  whether  from 
receiving  accessions  or  merely  from  the  different  form  of  slope, 
it  got  wider  on  its  journey  down  to  the  Atrio  del  Cavallo,  a 
thousand  feet  below.  The  slope  immediately  below  the  exit 
must  have  been  near  fifty,  but  the  lava  did  not  flow  quicker  than 
very  thick  treacle  would  do  under  like  circumstances.  And 
there  were  plenty  of  freshly  cooled  lava  streams  about,  inclined 
at  angles  far  greater  than  those  which  that  learned  Academician, 
Elie  de  Beaumont,  declared  to  be  possible.  Naturally  I  was 
ashamed  of  these  impertinent  lava  currents,  and  felt  inclined 
to  call  them  "  Laves  mousseuses." 

Courage,  my  friend,  behold  land !  I  know  you  love  my 
handwriting.  I  am  off  to  Rome  to-day,  and  this  day- week,  if 
all  goes  well,  I  shall  be  under  my  own  roof-tree  again.  In  fact 
I  hope  to  reach  London  on  Saturday  evening.  It  will  be  jolly 
to  see  your  face  again. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

My  best  remembrances  to  Hirst  if  you  see  him  before  I  do. 

My  father  reached  home  on  April  6,  sunburnt  and 
bearded  almost  beyond  recognition,  but  not  really  well,  for 


402  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

as  soon  as  he  began  to  work  again  in  London,  his  old  enemy 
returned.  Early  hours,  the  avoidance  of  society  and  soci- 
eties, an  hour's  riding  before  starting  at  nine  for  South 
Kensington,  were  all  useless ;  the  whole  year  was  poisoned 
until  a  special  diet  prescribed  by  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir)  An- 
drew Clark,  followed  by  another  trip  abroad,  effected  a  cure. 
I  remember  his  saying  once  that  he  learned  by  sad  ex- 
perience that  such  a  holiday  as  that  in  Egypt  was  no  good 
for  him.  What  he  really  required  was  mountain  air  and 
plenty  of  exercise.  The  following  letters  fill  up  the  outline 
of  this  period : — 

26  Abbey  Place,  May  20,  1872. 

My  dear  Dohrn  —  I  suppose  that  you  are  now  back  in 
Naples,  perambulating  the  Chiaja,  and  looking  ruefully  on  the 
accumulation  of  ashes  on  the  foundations  of  the  aquarium ! 
The  papers,  at  any  rate,  tell  us  that  the  ashes  of  Vesuvius  have 
fallen  abundantly  at  Naples.  Moreover,  that  abominable 
municipality  is  sure  to  have  made  the  eruption  an  excuse  for 
all  sorts  of  delays.  May  the  gods  give  you  an  extra  share  of 
temper  and  patience ! 

What  an  unlucky  dog  our  poor  Ray  is,  to  go  and  get  fever 
when  of  all  times  in  the  world's  history  he  should  not  have  had 
it.  However,  I  hear  he  is  better  and  on  his  way  home.  I  hope 
he  will  be  well  enough  when  he  returns  not  only  to  get  his 
Fellowship,  but  to  help  me  in  my  schoolmaster  work  in  June 
and  July. 

I  was  greatly  disgusted  to  miss  you  in  Naples,  but  it  was 
something  to  find  your  father  instead.  What  a  vigorous,  genial 
youngster  of  three  score  and  ten  he  is.  I  declare  I  felt  quite 
aged  beside  him.  We  had  a  glorious  day  on  Vesuvius,  and  be- 
haved very  badly  by  leaving  him  at  the  inn  for  I  do  not  know 
how  many  hours,  while  we  wandered  about  the  cone.  But  he 
had  a  very  charming  young  lady  for  companion,  and  possibly 
had  the  best  of  it.  I  am  very  sorry  that  at  the  last  I  went  off 
in  a  hurry  without  saying  "  Good-bye  "  to  him,  but  I  desired 
Lankester  to  explain,  and  I  am  sure  he  will  have  sympathised 
with  my  anxiety  to  see  Rome. 

I  returned,  thinking- myself  very  well,  but  a  bad  fit  of  dys- 
pepsia seized  me,  and  I  found  myself  obliged  to  be  very  idle 
and  very  careful  of  myself — neither  of  which  things  are  to  my 
taste.  But  I  am  right  again  now,  and  hope  to  have  no  more 
backslidings.    However,  I  am  afraid  I  may  not  be  able  to  attend 


1872  LETTERS  TO  DOHRN  403 

the  Brighton  meeting.  In  which  case  you  will  have  to  pay  us  a 
visit,  wherever  we  may  be — ^where,  we  have  not  yet  made  up 
our  minds,  but  it  will  not  be  so  far  as  St  Andrews. 

Now  for  a  piece  of  business.  The  new  Governor  of  Ceylon 
is  a  friend  of  mine,  and  is  proposing  to  set  up  a  Natural  History 
Museum  in  Ceylon.  He  wants  a  curator — some  vigorous  fellow 
with  plenty  of  knowledge  and  power  of  organisation  who  will 
make  use  of  his  great  opportunities.  He  tells  me  he  thinks  he 
can  start  him  with  £350  a  year  (and  a  house),  with  possible 
increase  to  £400.  I  do  not  know  any  one  here  who  would  an- 
swer the  purpose.  Can  you  recommend  me  any  one?  If  you 
can  let  me  know  at  once,  and  don't  take  so  long  in.  writing  to 
me  as  I  have  been  in  writing  to  you. 

I  await  the  "  Prophecies  of  the  Holy  Antonius  "  *  anxiously. 
Like  the  Jews  of  old,  I  come  of  an  unbelieving  generation,  and 
need  a  sign.  The  bread  and  the  oil,  also  the  chamber  in  the 
wall,  shall  not  fail  the  prophet  when  he  comes  in  August:  nor 
Donner  and  Blitzes  either. 

I  leave  the  rest  of  the  space  for  the  wife. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  H. 

The  following  is  in  reply  to  a  jest  of  Dr.  Dohm's — ^who 
was  still  a  bachelor — upon  a  friend's  unusual  sort  of  offering 
to  a  young  lady, 

I  suspected  the  love  affair  you  speak  of,  and  thought  the 
young  damsel  very  attractive.  I  suppose  it  will  come  to  nothing, 
even  if  he  be  disposed  to  add  his  hand  to  the  iron  and  quinine, 
in  the  next  present  he  offers.  .  .  .  And,  oh  my  Diogenes,  happy 
in  a  tub  of  arthropodous  Entwickelungsgeschichte,f  despise  not 
beefsteaks,  nor  wives  either.    They  also  are  good. 

Jermyn  Street,  June  5.  1872. 
My  dear  Dohrn — I  have  written  to  the  Governor  of  Ceylon, 
and  enclosed  the  first  half  of  your  letter  to  me  as  he  under- 
stands High  Dutch.  I  have  told  him  that  the  best  thing  he  can 
do  is  to  write  to  you  at  Naples  and  tell  you  he  will  be  very 
happy  to  see  you  as  soon  as  you  can  come.  And  that  if  you  do 
come  you  will  give  him  the  best  possible  advice  about  his 
museum,  and  let  him  have  no  rest  until  he  has  given  you  a  site 
for  a  zoological  station. 

♦  His  work  on  the  development  of  the  Arthropoda. 
t  History  of  Development, 


404 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 


I  have  no  doubt  you  will  get  a  letter  from  him  in  three 
weeks  or  so.  His  name  is  Gregory,  and  you  will  find  him  a 
good-humoured  acute  man  of  the  world,  with  a  very  great  gen- 
eral interest  in  scientific  and  artistic  matters.  Indeed  in  art  I 
believe  he  is  a  considerable  connoisseur. 

I  am  very  grieved  to  hear  of  your  father's  serious  illness. 
At  his  age  cerebral  attacks  are  serious,  and  when  we  spent  so 
many  pleasant  hours  together  at  Naples,  he  seemed  to  have  an 
endless  store  of  vigour — very  much  like  his  son  Anton. 

What  put  it  into  your  head  that  I  had  any  doubt  of  your 
power  of  work?  I  am  ready  to  believe  that  you  are  Hydra  in 
the  matter  of  heads  and  Briareus  in  the  matter  of  hands. 

...  If  you  go  to  Ceylon  I  shall  expect  you  to  come  back 
by  way  of  England.  It's  the  shortest  route  an)rwhere  from 
India,  though  it  may  not  look  so  on  the  map. 

How  am  I?  Oh,  getting  along  and  just  keeping  the  devil  of 
dyspepsia  at  arm's  length.  The  wife  and  other  members  of  the 
H.  F.  are  well,  and  would  send  you  greetings  if  they  knew  I 
was  writing  to  you. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

A  little  later  Von  Willemoes  Suhm  ("  why  the  deuce 
does  he  have  such  a  long  name,  instead  of  a  handy  mono- 
syllable or  dissylable  like  Dohm  or  Huxley?  ")  was  recom- 
mended for  the  post.  He  afterwards  was  one  of  the  scien- 
tific staff  of  the  Challenger,  and  died  during  the  voyage. 

MORTHOE,  NEAR   BARNSTAPLE,  NORTH   DeVON, 

^«^-  5.  1872. 
My  dear  Dohrn — I  trust  you  have  not  been  very  wroth 
with  me  for  my  long  delay  in  answering  your  last  letter.  For 
the  last  six  weeks  I  have  been  very  busy  lecturing  daily  to  a 
batch  of  schoolmasters,  and  looking  after  their  practical  in- 
struction in  the  laboratory  which  the  Government  has,  at  last, 
given  me.  In  the  "intervals  of  business"  I  have  been  taking 
my  share  in  a  battle  which  has  been  raging  between  my  friend 
Hooker  of  Kew  and  his  official  chief.  .  .  .  And  moreover  I  have 
just  had  strength  enough  to  get  my  daily  work  done  and  no 
more,  and  everything  that  could  be  put  off  has  gone  to  the 
wall.  Three  days  ago,  the  "  Happy  Family,"  bag  and  baggage, 
came  to  this  remote  corner,  where  I  propose  to  take  a  couple 
of  months'  entire  rest — and  put  myself  in  order  for  next  winter's 
campaign.    It  is  a  little  village  five  miles  from  the  nearest  town 


1872  CLASSES   FOR  SCIENCE  TEACHERS  405 

(which  is  Ilfracombe),  and  our  house  is  at  the  head  of  a  ravine 
running  down  to  the  sea.  Our  backs  are  turned  to  England 
and  our  faces  to  America  with  no  land  that  I  know  of  between. 
The  country  about  is  beautiful,  and  if  you  will  come  we  will 
put  you  up  at  the  little  inn,  and  show  you  something  better  than 
even  Swanage.  There  are  slight  difficulties  about  the  commis- 
sariat, but  that  is  the  Hausfrau's  business,  and  not  mine.  At 
the  worst,  bread,  eggs,  milk,  and  rabbits  are  certain,  and  the 
post  from  London  takes  two  days ! 

MoRTHOE,  Ilfracombe,  N.  Devon, 
-^«^.  23,  1872. 

My  dear  Whirlwind— I  promise  you  all  my  books,  past, 
present,  and  to  come  for  the  Aquarium.  The  best  part  about 
them  is  that  they  will  not  take  up  much  room.  Ask  for  Owen's 
by  all  means ;  "  Fas  est  etiam  ab  hoste  doceri."  I  am  very  glad 
you  have  got  the  British  Association  publications,  as  it  will  be  a 
good  precedent  for  the  Royal  Society. 

Have  you  talked  to  Hooker  about  marine  botany  ?  He  may 
be  able  to  help  you  as  soon  as  X.  the  accursed  (may  jackasses 
sit  upon  his  grandmother's  grave,  as  we  say  in  the  East)  leaves 
him  alone. 

It  is  hateful  that  you  should  be  in  England  without  seeing 
us,  and  for  the  first  time  I  lament  coming  here.  The  children 
howled  in  chorus  when  they  heard  that  you  could  not  come.  At 
this  moment  the  whole  tribe  and  their  mother  have  gone  to  the 
sea,  and  I  must  answer  your  letter  before  the  post  goes  out, 
which  it  does  here  about  half  an  hour  after  it  comes  in. — Ever 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  1872  Huxley  was  at  length  enabled  to  establish  in 
his  regular  classes  a  system  of  science  teaching  based  upon 
laboratory  work  by  the  students,  which  he  had  long  felt  to 
be  the  only  true  method.  It  involved  the  verification  of 
every  fact  by  each  student,  and  was  a  training  in  scientific 
method  even  more  than  in  scientific  fact.  Had  circum- 
stances only  permitted,  the  new  epoch  in  biological  teaching 
might  have  been  antedated  by  many  years.  But,  as  he  says 
in  the  preface  to  the  Practical  Biology,  1875 — 

Practical  work  was  forbidden  by  the  limitations  of  space  in 
the  building  in  Jcrmyn  Street,  which  possessed  no  room  ap- 
plicable to  the  purpose  of  a  laboratory,  and  I  was  obliged  to 


4o6  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

content  myself,  for  many  years,  with  what  seemed  the  next  best 
thing,  namely,  as  full  an  exposition  as  I  could  give,  of  the  char- 
acters of  certain  plants  and  animals,  selected  as  t)rpes  of  vege- 
table and  animal  organisation,  by  way  of  introduction  to  sys- 
tematic zoology  and  paleontology. 

There  was  no  laboratory  work,  but  he  would  show  an 
experiment  or  a  dissection  during  the  lecture  or  perhaps 
for  a  few  minutes  after,  when  the  audience  crowded  round 
the  lecture  table. 

The  opportunity  came  in  1871.  As  he  afterwards  im- 
pressed upon  the  great  city  companies  in  regard  to  technical 
education,  the  teaching  of  science  throughout  the  country 
turned  upon  the  supply  of  trained  teachers.  The  part  to  be 
played  by  elementary  science  under  the  Education  Act  of 
1870,  added  urgency  to  the  question  of  proper  teaching. 
With  this  in  view,  he  organised  a  course  of  instruction  for 
those  who  had  been  preparing  pupils  for  the  examinations 
of  the  Science  and  Art  Department,  "  scientific  mission- 
aries," as  he  described  them  to  Dr.  Dohm. 

In  the  promotion  of  the  practical  teaching  of  biology  (writes 
the  late  Jeffery  Parker,  Nat,  Sci.  viii.  49),  Huxley's  services 
can  hardly  be  overestimated.  Botanists  had  always  been  in  the 
habit  of  distributing  flowers  to  their  students,  which  they  could 
dissect  or  not  as  they  chose;  animal  histology  was  taught  in 
many  colleges  under  the  name  of  practical  physiology;  and  at 
Oxford  an  excellent  system  of  zoological  work  had  been  estab- 
lished by  the  late  Professor  Rolleston.*  But  the  biological 
laboratory,  as  it  is  now  understood,  may  be  said  to  date  from 
about  1870,  when  Huxley,  with  the  co-operation  of  Professors 

♦  **  Rolleston  (Professor  Lankester  writes  to  me)  was  the  first  to 
systematically  conduct  the  study  of  Zoology  and  Comparative  Anat- 
omy in  this  country  by  making  use  of  a  carefully  selected  series  of 
animals.  His  'types'  were  the  Rat,  the  Common  Pigeon,  the  Frog, 
the  Perch,  the  Crayfish,  Blackbeetle,  Anodon,  Snail,  Earthworm, 
Leech,  Tapeworm.  He  had  a  series  of  dissections  of  these  mounted, 
also  loose  dissections  and  elaborate  MS.  descriptions.  The  student 
went  through  this  series,  dissecting  fresh  specimens  for  himself. 
After  some  ten  years*  experience  Rolleston  printed  his  MS.  directions 
and  notes  as  a  book,  called  Forms  of  Animal  Life, 

**This  all  preceded  the  practical  class  at  South  Kensington  in  1871. 
I  have  no  doubt  that  Rolleston  was  influenced  in  his  plan  by  your 


1872  THE  NEW  TEACHING  OF  BIOLOGY  407 

Foster,  Rutherford,  Lankester,  Martin,  and  others,*  held  short 
summer  classes  for  science  teachers  at  South  Kensington,  the 
daily  work  consisting  of  an  hour's  lecture  followed  by  four 
hours'  laboratory  work,  in  which  the  students  verified  for  them- 
selves facts  which  they  had  hitherto  heard  about  and  taught  to 
their  unfortunate  pupils  from  books  alone.  The  naive  astonish- 
ment and  delight  of  the  more  intelligent  among  them  was 
sometimes  almost  pathetic.  One  clergyman,  who  had  for  years 
conducted  classes  in  physiology  under  the  Science  and  Art  De- 
partment, was  shown  a  drop  of  his  own  blood  under  the  micro- 
scope. "  Dear  me  I "  he  exclaimed,  "  it's  just  like  the  picture 
in  Huxley's  Physiology,'* 

Later,  in  1872,  when  the  biological  department  of  the 
Royal  School  of  Mines  was  transferred  to  South  Kensing- 
ton, this  method  was  adopted  as  part  of  the  regular  cur- 
riculum of  the  school,  and  from  that  time  the  teaching  "  of 
zoology  by  lectures  alone  became  an  anachronism." 

The  first  of  these  courses  to  schoolmasters  took  place, 
as  has  been  said,  in  1871.  Some  large  rooms  on  the  ground 
floor  of  the  South  Kensington  Museum  were  used  for  the 
purpose.  There  was  no  proper  laboratory,  but  professor 
and  demonstrators  rigged  up  everything  as  wanted.  Hux- 
ley was  in  the  full  tide  of  that  more  than  natural  energy 
which  preceded  his  break-down  in  health,  and  gave  what 
Professor  Ray  Lankester  describes  as  "  a  wonderful  course 
of  lectures,"  one  every  day  from  ten  to  eleven  for  six  weeks, 
in  June  and  half  July.  The  three  demonstrators  (those 
named  first  on  the  list  above)  each  took  a  third  of  the  class, 
about  thirty-five  apiece.  "  Great  enthusiasm  prevailed.  We 
went  over  a  number  of  plants  and  of  animals — including 

father's  advice.  But  RoUeston  had  the  earlier  opportunity  of  putting 
the  method  into  practice. 

**  Your  father's  series  of  types  were  chosen  so  as  to  include  plants, 
and  he  gave  more  attention  to  microscopic  forms  and  to  microscopic 
structure  than  did  Rolleston." 

It  was  distinctive  of  the  lectures  that  they  were  on  biology,  on 
plants  as  well  as  animals,  to  illustrate  all  the  fundamental  features  of 
living  things. 

♦  T.  J.  Parker.  G.  B.  Howes,  and  Sir  W.  Thiselton  Dyer,  K.  C.  M.  G.. 
C.  I.  E. 

27 


4o8  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

microscopic  work  and  some  physiological  experiment.    The 
*  types '  were  more  numerous  than  in  later  courses." 

In  1872  the  new  laboratory — ^the  present  one — ^was 
ready.  "  I  have  a  laboratory/'  writes  Huxley  to  Dohm, 
"  which  it  shall  do  your  eyes  good  to  behold  when  you 
come  back  from  Ceylon,  the  short  way  "  {i,e,  via  England). 
Here  a  similar  course,  under  the  same  demonstrators,  as- 
sisted by  H.  N.  Martin,  was  given  in  the  summer,  Huxley, 
though  very  shaky  in  health,  making  a  point  of  carrying 
them  out  himself. 

26  Abbey  Place,  Jum  4,  1872. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  must  be  at  work  on  examination 
papers  all  day  to-day,  but  to-morrow  I  am  good  to  lunch  with 
you  (and  abscond  from  the  Royal  Commission,  which  will  get 
on  very  well  without  me)  or  to  go  with  you  and  call  on  your 
friends,  whichever  may  be  most  convenient 

Many  thanks  for  all  your  kind  and  good  advice  about  the 
lectures,  but  I  really  think  they  will  not  be  too  much  for  me, 
and  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  I  should  carry  them  on. 

They  are  the  commencement  of  a  new  system  of  teaching 
which,  if  I  mistake  not,  will  grow  into  a  big  thing  and  bear 
great  fruit,  and  just  at  this  present  moment  (nobody  is  neces- 
sary very  long)  I  am  the  necessary  man  to  carry  it  on.  I  could 
not  get  a  suppleant  if  I  would,  and  you  are  no  more  the  man 
than  I  am  to  let  a  pet  scheme  fall  through  for  the  fear  of  a 
little  risk  of  self.  And  really  and  truly  I  find  that  by  taking 
care  I  pull  along  very  well.  Moreover,  it  isn't  my  brains  that 
get  wrong,  but  only  my  confounded  stomach. 

I  have  read  your  memorial  *  which  is  very  strong  and  strik- 
ing, but  a  difficulty  occurs  to  me  about  a  good  deal  of  it,  and 
that  is  that  it  won't  do  to  quote  Hooker's  official  letters  before 
they  have  been  called  for  in  Parliament,  or  otherwise  made 
public.  We  should  find  ourselves  in  the  wrong  officially,  I  am 
afraid,  by  doing  so.  However  we  can  discuss  this  when  we 
meet.  I  will  be  at  the  Athenaeum  at  4  o'clock. — Ever  yours 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

As  for  the  teaching  by  "types,"  which  was  the  most 
salient  feature  of  his  method,  and  therefore  the  most  easily 
applied  and  misapplied,  Professor  Parker  continues: — 

♦  In  the  affair  of  Dr.  Hooker  already  referred  to. 


1872         ELEMENTARY  INSTRUCTION   IN   BIOLOGY  409 

Huxley's  method  of  teachings  was  based  upon  the  personal 
examination  by  the  student  of  certain  "types"  of  animals  and 
plants  selected  with  a  view  of  illustrating  the  various  groups. 
But,  in  his  lectures,  these  types  were  not  treated  as  the  isolated 
things  they  necessarily  appear  in  a  laboratory  manual  or  an 
examination  syllabus;  each,  on  the  contrary,  took  its  proper 
place  as  an  example  of  a  particular  grade  of  structure,  and  no 
student  of  ordinary  intelligence  could  fail  to  see  that  the  types 
were  valuable,  not  for  themselves,  but  simply  as  marking,  so  to 
speak,  the  chapters  of  a  connected  narrative.  Moreover,  in 
addition  to  the  types,  a  good  deal  of  work  of  a  more  general 
character  was  done.  Thus,  while  we  owe  to  Huxley  more  than 
to  anyone  else  the  modern  system  of  teaching  biology,  he  is  by 
no  means  responsible  for  the  somewhat  arid  and  mechanical 
aspect  it  has  assumed  in  certain  quarters. 

The  application  of  the  same  system  to  botanical  teaching 
was  inaugurated  in  1873,  when,  being  compelled  to  go 
abroad  for  his  health,  he  arranged  that  Mr.  (now  Sir  W.) 
Thiselton  Dyer  should  take  his  place  and  lecture  on 
botany. 

The  Elementary  Instruction  in  Biology^  published  in  1875, 
was  a  text-book  based  upon  this  system.  This  book,  in 
writing  which  Huxley  was  assisted  by  his  demonstrator, 
H.  N.  Martin,  was  reprinted  thirteen  times  before  1888, 
when  it  was  "  Revised  and  Extended  by  Howes  and  Scott," 
his  later  assistants.  The  revised  edition  is  marked  by  one 
radical  change,  due  to  the  insistence  of  his  demonstrator, 
the  late  Prof.  Jeffery  Parker.  In  the  first  edition,  the  lower 
forms  of  life  were  first  dealt  with;  from  simple  cells — 
amoeba,  yeast-plant,  blood-corpuscule  —  the  student  was 
taken  through  an  ascending  series  of  plants  and  of  animals, 
ending  with  the  frog  or  rabbit.  But  "  the  experience  of 
the  Lecture-room  and  the  Laboratory  taught  me,"  writes 
Huxley  in  the  new  preface,  "  that  philosophical  as  it  might 
be  in  theory,  it  had  defects  in  practice."  The  process  might 
be  regarded  as  not  following  the  scientific  rule  of  proceeding 
from  the  known  to  the  unknown;  while  the  small  and 
simple  organisms  required  a  skill  in  handling  high  power 
microscopes  which  was  difficult  for  beginners  to  acquire. 
Hence  the  course  was  reversed,  and  began  with  the  more 


4IO 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 


familiar  type  of  the  rabbit  or  frog.  This  was  RoUeston's 
practice ;  but  it  may  be  noted  that  Professor  Ray  Lankester 
has  always  maintained  and  further  developed  the  "  original 
Huxleian  plan  of  beginning  with  the  same  microscopic 
forms  "  as  being  a  most  important  philosophic  improvement 
on  RoUeston's  plan,  and  giving,  he  considers,  "  the  truer 
*  twist,'  as  it  were,  to  a  student's  mind." 

When  the  book  was  sent  to  Darwin,  he  wrote  back 
(November  12,  1875): — 

My  dear  Huxley — Many  thanks  for  your  biology,  which 
I  have  read.  It  was  a  real  stroke  of  genius  to  think  of  such  a 
plan.  Lord,  how  I  wish  that  I  had  gone  through  such  a  course. 
— Ever  yours,  '  C.  Darwin. 

A  large  portion  of  his  time  and  energy  was  occupied 
in  the  organisation  of  this  course  of  teaching  for  teachers, 
and  its  elaboration  before  being  launched  on  a  larger  scale 
in  October,  when  the  Biological  Department  of  the  Jermyn 
Street  school  was  transferred  to  the  new  buildings  at  South 
Kensington,  fitted  with  laboratories  which  were  to  excite  his 
friend  Dr.  Dohm's  envy.  But  he  was  also  at  work  upon  his 
share  of  the  Science  Primers y  so  far  as  his  still  uncertain 
health  allowed.  This  and  the  affairs  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion are  the  subject  of  several  letters  to  Sir  Henry  Roscoe 
and  Dr.  Tyndall. 

26  Abbey  Place,  Apri/  8,  1872. 

My  dear  Roscoe — Many  thanks  for  your  kind  letter  of  wel- 
come. My  long  rest  has  completely  restored  me.  As  my  doctor 
told  me,  I  was  sound,  wind  and  limb,  and  had  merely  worn  my- 
self out.  I  am  not  going  to  do  that  again,  and  you  see  that  I 
have  got  rid  of  the  School  Board.    It  was  an  awful  incubus ! 

Oddly  enough  I  met  the  Ashtons  in  the  Vatican,  and  heard 
about  your  perplexities  touching  Oxford.  I  should  have  advised 
you  to  do  as  you  have  done.  I  think  that  you  have  a  great 
piece  of  work  to  do  at  Owens  College,  and  that  you  will  do  it. 
If  you  had  gone  to  Oxford  you  would  have  sacrificed  all  the 
momentum  you  have  gained  in  Manchester ;  and  would  have  had 
to  begin  de  novo,  among  conditions  which,  I  imagine,  it  is  very 
hard  for  a  non-University  man  to  appreciate  and  adjust  him- 
self to. 

I  like  the  look  of  the  "  Primers  "  (of  which  Macmillan  has 


1872  WORRIED  BY   HIS  AILMENTS  411 

sent  me  copies  to-day)  very  much,  and  shall  buckle  to  at  mine 
as  soon  as  possible.  I  am  very  glad  you  did  not  wait  for  me. 
I  remained  in  a  very  shaky  condition  up  to  the  middle  of  March, 
and  could  do  nothing. — ^Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 
The  wife  unites  with  me  in  kind  regards  to  Mrs.  Roscoe  and 
yourself. 

MoRTHOE,  Ilfracombe,  N.  Devon, 
/  *  Sept,  9,  1872. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  was  very  glad  to  have  news  of  you, 
and  to  hear  that  you  are  vigorous. 

My  outing  hitherto  has  not  been  very  successful,  so  far  as 
the  inward  man  is  concerned  at  least,  for  the  weather  has  been 
good  enough.  •  But  I  have  been  worried  to  death  with  dyspepsia 
and  the  hypochondriacal  bedevilments  that  follow  in  its  train, 
until  I  am  seriously  thinking  of  returning  to  town  to  see  if  the 
fine  air  of  St.  John's  Wood  (as  the  man  says  in  Punch)  won't 
enable  me  to  recover  from  the  effects  of  the  country. 

I  wish  I  were  going  with  you  to  Yankee  Land,  not  to  do  any 
lecturing,  God  forbid!  but  to  be  a  quiet  spectator  in  a  comer 
of  the  enthusiastic  audiences.  I  am  as  lazy  as  a  dog,  and  the 
role  of  looker-on  would  just  suit  me.  However,  I  have  a  good 
piece  of  work  to  do  in  organising  my  new  work  at  South  Ken- 
sington. 

I  have  just  asked  my  children  what  message  they  have  to 
send  to  you,  and  they  send  their  love ;  very  sorry  they  won't  see 
you  before  you  go,  and  hope  you  won't  come  back  speaking 
through  your  nose ! 

I  shall  be  in  town  this  week  or  next,  and  therefore  shall  see 
you. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

26  Abbey  Place,  S<pf,  17,  1872. 

My  dear  Roscoe — ^Your  letter  has  followed  me  from  Mor- 
thoe  here.  We  had  good  enough  weather  in  Devon — ^but  my 
stay  there  was  marred  by  the  continuous  dyspepsia  and  concur- 
rent hypochondriacal  incapacity.  At  last,  I  could  not  stand  it 
any  longer,  and  came  home  for  "change  of  air,"  leaving  the 
wife  and  chicks  to  follow  next  week.  By  dint  of  living  on  cocoa 
and  Revalenta,  and  giving  up  drink,  tobacco,  and  all  other 
things  that  make  existence  pleasant,  I  am  getting  better. 

What  was  your  motive  in  getting  kicked  by  a  horse?  I 
stopped  away  from  the  Association  without  that;  and  am  not 
sorry  to  have  been  out  of  the  way  of  the  X.  business.    What  is 


412  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

4 

to  become  of  the  association  if is  to  monopolise  it?    And 

then  there  was  that  scoundrel,  Louis  Napoleon — ^to  whom  no 
honest  man  ought  to  speak — gracing  the  scene.  I  am  right  glad 
I  was  out  of  it 

I  am  at  my  wits'  end  to  suggest  a  lecturer  for  you.  I  wish 
I  could  offer  myself,  but  I  have  refused  everything  of  that  sort 
on  the  score  of  health ;  and  moreover,  I  am  afraid  of  my  wife  I 

What  do  you  say  to  Ramsay?  He  lectures  very  well.  I 
have  done  nothing  whatever  to  the  Primer.  Stewart  sent  me 
Geikie's  letter  this  morning,  and  I  have  asked  Macmillan  to 
send  Geikie  the  proofs  of  my  Primer  so  far  as  they  go.  We 
must  not  overlap  more  than  can  be  helped. 

I  have  not  seen  Hooker  yet  since  my  return.  While  all  this 
row  has  been  going  on,  I  could  not  ask  him  to  do  anything  for 
us.  And  imtil  X.  is  dead  and  d — d  (officially  at  any  rate),  I  am 
afraid  there  will  be  little  peace  for  him. — Ever  yours  very  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

Please  remember  me  very  kindly  to  Mrs.  Roscoe. 

In  a  letter  of  September  25  is  a  reference  to  the  way  in 
which  his  increasing  family  had  outgrown  his  house  in 
Abbey  Place.  Early  in  the  preceding  year,  he  had  come  to 
the  decision  to  buy  a  small  house  in  the  same  neighbour- 
hood, and  add  to  it  so  as  to  give  elbow-room  to  each  and 
all  of  the  family.  This  was  against  the  advice  of  his  friend 
and  legal  adviser,  to  whom  he  wrote  announcing  his  de- 
cision, as  follows.  The  letter  was  adorned  with  a  sketch  of 
an  absurd  cottage,  "  Ye  House ! "  perched  like  a  windmill 
on  a  kind  of  pedestal,  and  with  members  of  the  family 
painfully  ascending  a  ladder  to  the  upper  storey,  above  the 
ominous  legend,  "  Staircase  forgotten." 

March  20,  1 871. 

My  dear  Burton — There  is  something  delightfully  refresh- 
ing in  rushing  into  a  piece  of  practical  work  in  the  teeth  of 
one's  legal  adviser. 

If  the  lease  of  a  piece  of  ground  whereon  I  am  going  to 
build  mine  house  come  to  you,  will  you  see  if  it's  all  right. — 
Yours  wilfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

This  house.  No.  4  Marlborough  Place,  stands  on  the 
north  side  of  that  quiet  street,  close  to  its  junction  with 
Abbey  Road.    It  is  next  door  to  the  Presb)rterian  Church, 


i872  HOUSE  IN   MARLBOROUGH   PLACE  413 

on  the  other  side  of  which  again  is  a  Jewish  synagogue. 
The  irregular  front  of  the  house,  with  the  original  cottage, 
white-painted  and  deep-eaved,  joined  by  a  big  porch  to  the 
new  uncompromising  square  face  of  yellow  brick,  distin- 
guished only  by  its  extremely  large  windows,  was  screened 
from  the  road  by  a  high  oak  paling,  and  a  well-grown  row 
of  young  lime  trees.  Taken  as  a  whole,  it  was  not  without 
character,  and  certainly  was  unlike  most  London  houses. 
It  was  built  for  comfort,  not  beauty ;  designed,  within  strin- 
gent limits  as  to  cost,  to  give  each  member  of  the  family 
room  to  get  away  by  himself  or  herself  if  so  disposed. 
Moreover,  the  gain  in  space  made  it  more  possible  to  see 
something  of  friends  or  put  up  a  guest,  than  in  the  small 
and  crowded  house  in  Abbey  Place. 

A  small  garden  lay  in  front  of  the  house;  a  consid- 
erably larger  garden  behind,  wherein  the  chief  ornament 
was  then  a  large  apple-tree,  that  never  failed  to  spread 
a  cloud  of  blossom  for  my  father's  birthday,  the  4th  of 
May. 

Over  the  way,  too,  for  many  years  we  were  faced  by  a 
long  garden  full  of  blossoming  pear-trees  in  which  thrushes 
and  blackbirds  sang  and  nested,  belonging  to  a  desolate 
house  in  the  Abbey  Road,  which  was  tenanted  by  a  soli- 
tary old  man,  supposed  to  be  a  male  prototype  of  Miss 
Havisham  in  Great  Expectations. 

The  move  was  accompanied  by  a  unique  and  unpleasant 
experience.  A  knavish  fellow,  living  in  a  cottage  close  to 
the  foot  of  the  garden,  sought  to  blackmail  the  new-comer, 
under  threat  of  legal  proceedings,  alleging  that  a  catchment 
well  for  surface  drainage  had  made  his  basement  damp. 
Unfortunately  for  his  case,  it  could  be  shown  that  the  pipes 
had  not  yet  been  connected  with  the  well,  and  when  he 
carried  out  his  threat,  he  gained  nothing  from  his  suit  in 
Chancery  and  his  subsequent  appeal,  except  some  stinging 
remarks  from  Vice-Chancellor  Malins. 

I  am  afraid  the  brute  is  impecunious  (wrote  my  father  after 
the  first  suit  failed),  and  that  I  shall  get  nothing  out  of  him. 
So  I  shall  have  had  three  months'  worry,  and  be  fined  £100  or 
so  for  being  wholly  and  absolutely  in  the  right. 


414  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

Happily  the  man  turned  out  to  have  enough  means  to 
pay  the  bulk  of  the  costs;  but  that  was  no  compensation 
for  the  mental  worry  and  consequent  ill-health  entailed  from 
November  to  June. 

The  only  amusing  point  in  the  whole  affair  was  when 
the  plaintiff's  solicitors  had  the  face  to  file  an  affidavit  before 
the  Vice-Chancellor  himself  in  answer  to  his  strictures  upon 
the  case,  "  about  as  regular  a  proceeding,"  reports  Mr. 
Burton,  "  as  for  a  middy  to  reply  upon  the  Post  Captain 
on  his  own  quarter-deck." 

The  move  was  made  in  the  third  week  of  December 
(1872)  amid  endless  rain  and  mud  and  with  workmen  still 
in  the  house.  It  was  attended  by  one  inconvenience.  He 
writes  to  Darwin  on  December  20,  1872 : — 

I  am  utterly  disgusted  at  having  only  just  received  your 
note  of  Tuesday.  But  the  fact  is,  there  is  a  certain  inconven- 
ience about  having  four  addresses  as  has  been  my  case  for  the 
most  part  of  this  week,  in  consequence  of  our  moving — and  as 
I  have  not  been  to  Jermyn  Street  before  to-day,  I  have  missed 
your  note.  I  should  run  round  to  Queen  Anne  St  now  on  the 
chance  of  catching  you,  but  I  am  bound  here  by  an  appoint- 
ment. 

One  incident  of  the  move,  however,  was  more  agreeable. 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  took  the  opportunity  of  sending  a  New 
Year's  gift  for  the  new  house,  in  the  shape  of  a  handsome 
clock,  wishing,  as  he  said,  "  to  express  in  some  way  more 
emphatic  than  by  words,  my  sense  of  the  many  kindnesses 
I  have  received  at  your  hands  during  the  twenty  years  of 
our  friendship.  Remembrance  of  the  things  you  have  done 
in  furtherance  of  my  aims,  and  of  the  invaluable  critical  aid 
you  have  given  me,  with  so  much  patience  and  at  so  much 
cost  of  time,  has  often  made  me  feel  how  much  I  owe  you." 

After  a  generous  reference  to  occasions  when  the  warmth 
of  debate  might  have  betrayed  him  into  more  vigorous  ex- 
pressions than  he  intended,  he  concludes : — 

But  inadequately  as  I  may  ordinarily  show  it,  you  will 
(knowing  that  I  am  tolerably  candid)  believe  me  when  I  say 
that  there  is  no  one  whose  judgment  on  all  subjects  I  so  much 
respect,  or  whose  friendship  I  so  highly  value. 


1873  TYNDALL'S   LOAN  415 

It  may  be  remembered  that  the  1872  address  on  "  Ad- 
ministrative Nihilism  "  led  tp  a  reply  from  the  pen  of  Mr. 
Spencer,  as  the  champion  of  Individualism.  When  my 
father  sent  him  the  volume  in  which  this  address  was  printed, 
he  wrote  back  a  letter  (Sept.  29,  1873)  which  is  characterised 
by  the  same  feeling.  It  expresses  his  thanks  for  the  book, 
"  and  many  more  for  the  kind  expression  of  feeling  in  the 
preface.  If  you  had  intended  to  set  an  example  to  the 
Philistines  of  the  way  in  which  controversial  differences 
may  be  maintained  without  any  decrease  of  sympathy,  you 
could  not  have  done  it  more  perfectly." 

In  connection  with  the  building  of  the  house,  Tyndall 
had  advanced  a  sum  of  money  to  his  friend,  and  with  his 
usual  generosity,  not  only  received  interest  with  the  greatest 
reluctance,  but  would  have  liked  to  make  a  gift  of  the 
principal.  He  writes,  "  If  I  remain  a  bachelor  I  will  cir- 
cumvent you — if  not — not.  It  cleaves  to  me  like  dirt — ^and 
that  is  why  you  wish  to  get  rid  of  it"  To  this  he  received 
answer : — 

Feb,  26,  1873. 
I  am  not  to  be  deterred  by  any  amount  of  bribery  and  cor- 
ruption, from  bringing  you  under  the  yoke  of  a  "  rare  and 
radiant," — whenever  I  discover  one  competent  to  undertake  the 
ticklish  business  of  governing  you.  I  hope  she  will  be  "  radiant," 
— ^uncommonly  "  rare  "  she  certainly  will  be  I 

Two  years  later  this  loan  was  paid  off,  with  the  following 
letter  :— 

4  Marlborough  Place, /a».  11,  1875. 
My  dear  old  Shylock — My  argosies  have  come  in,  and  here 
is  all  that  was  written  in  the  bond  I  If  you  want  the  pound  of 
flesh  too,  you  know  it  is  at  your  service,  and  my  Portia  won't 
raise  that  pettifogging  objection  to  shedding  a  little  blood  into 
the  bargain,  which  that  other  one  did. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

On  October  24  Miss  Jex  Blake  wrote  to  him  to  ask  his 
help  for  herself  and  the  other  women  medical  students  at 
Edinburgh.  For  two  years  they  had  only  been  able  to  get 
anatomical  teaching  in  a  mixed  class ;  but  wishing  to  have 
a  separate  class,  at  least  for  the  present,  they  had  tried  to 


4l6  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxvi 

arrange  for  one  that  session.  The  late  demonstrator  at  the 
Surgeons'  Hall,  who  had  given. them  most  of  their  teaching 
before,  had  undertaken  to  teach  this  separate  class,  but  was 
refused  recognition  by  the  University  Court,  on  the  ground 
that  they  had  no  evidence  of  his  qualifications,  wiiile  refusing 
to  let  him  prove  his  qualification  by  examination.  This  the 
women  students  Imderstood  to  be  an  indirect  means  of  sup- 
pressing their  aspirations;  they  therefore  begged  Huxley 
to  examine  their  instructor  with  a  view  to  giving  him  a 
certificate  which  should  carry  weight  with  the  University 
Court. 

He  replied: — 

Oct.  28, 1872. 

Dear  MiVDAM — ^While  I  fully  sympathise  with  the  efforts 
made  by  yourself  and  others,  to  obtain  for  women  the  education 
requisite  to  qualify  them  for  medical  practice,  and  while  I  think 
that  women  who  have  the  inclination  and  the  capacity  to  follow 
the  profession  of  medicine  are  most  unjustly  dealt  with  if  any 
obstacles  beyond  those  which  are  natural  and  inevitable  are 
placed  in  their  way,  I  must  nevertheless  add,  that  I  as  com- 
pletely sympathise  with  those  Professors  of  Anatomy,  Physi- 
ology, and  Obstetrics,  who  object  to  teach  such  subjects  to 
mixed  classes  of  young  men  and  women  brought  together  with- 
out any  further  evidence  of  moral  and  mental  fitness  for  such 
association  than  the  payment  of  their  fees. 

In  fact,  with  rare  exceptions,  I  have  refused  to  admit  women 
to  my  own  Lectures  on  Comparative  Anatomy  for  many  years 
past.  But  I  should  not  hesitate  to  teach  anything  I  know  to  a 
class  composed  of  women ;  and  I  find  it  hard  to  believe  that  any 
one  should  really  wish  to  prevent  women  from  obtaining  efficient 
separate  instruction,  and  from  being  admitted  to  Examination 
for  degrees  upon  the  same  terms  as  men. 

You  will  therefore  understand  that  I  should  be  most  glad 
to  help  you  if  I  could — and  it  is  with  great  regret  that  I  feel 
myself  compelled  to  refuse  your  request  to  examine  Mr.  H . 

In  the  first  place  I  am  in  the  midst  of  my  own  teaching,  and 
with  health  not  yet  completely  re-established  I  am  obliged  to 
keep  clear  of  all  unnecessary  work.  Secondly,  such  an  examina- 
tion must  be  practical,  and  I  have  neither  dissecting-room 
available  nor  the  anatomical  license  required  for  human  dis- 
section ;  and  thirdly,  it  is  not  likely  that  the  University  authori- 
ties would  attach  much  weight  to  my  report  on  one  or  two 


1872  MIXED  CLASSES  IN  ANATOMY  417 

days'  work — if  the  fact  that  Mr.  H has  already  filled  the 

office  of  anatomical  Demonstrator  (as  I  understand  from  you) 
does  not  satisfy  them  as  to  his  competency. — I  am,  dear  Madam, 
yours  very  faitfifuUy,  T.  H.  Huxley 

Miss  S.  Jex  Blake. 

The  last  event  of  the  year  was  that  he  was  elected  by 
the  students  Lord  Rector  of  Aberdeen  University — a  posi- 
tion, the  duties  of  which  consist  partly  in  attending  certain 
meetings  of  the  University  Court,  but  more  especially  in 
delivering  an  address.  This,  however,  was  not  required  for 
another  twelvemonth,  and  the  address  on  "  Universities, 
Actual  and  Ideal,"  was  delivered  in  fulfilment  of  this  duty 
on  February  1874, 


CHAPTER   XXVII 

1873 

The  year  opens  with  a  letter  to  Tyndall,  then  on  a 
lecturing  tour  in  America : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Abbey  Road,  N.W., 
January  I,  1872  [1873]. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  cannot  let  this  day  go  by  without 
wishing  you  a  happy  New  Year,  and  lamenting  your  absence 
from  our  customary  dinner.  But  Hirst  and  Spencer  and 
Michael  Foster  are  coming,  and  they  shall  drink  your  health  in 
champagne  while  I  do  the  like  in  cold  water,  making  up  by  the 
strength  of  my  good  wishes  for  the  weakness  of  the  beverage. 

You  see  I  write  from  the  new  house.  Getting  into  it  was  an 
awful  job,  made  worse  than  needful  by  the  infamous  weather  we 
have  had  for  weeks  and  months,  and  by  the  stupid  delays  of  the 
workmen  whom  we  had  fairly  to  shove  out  at  last  as  we  came 
in.  We  are  settling  down  by  degrees,  and  shall  be  very  com- 
fortable by  and  by,  though  I  do  not  suppose  that  we  shall  be 
able  to  use  the  drawing-room  for  two  or  three  months  to  come. 
I  am  very  glad  to  have  made  the  change,  but  there  is  a  draw- 
back to  everything  in  "  this  here  wale,"  as  Mrs.  Gamp  says, 
and  my  present  thorn  in  the  flesh  is  a  neighbour,  who  says  I 
have  injured  him  by  certain  operations  in  my  garden,  and  is 
trying  to  get  something  out  of  me  by  Chancery  proceedings. 
Fancy  finding  myself  a  defendant  in  Chancery ! 

It  is  particularly  hard  on  me,  as  I  have  been  especially  care- 
ful to  have  nothing  done  without  Burton's  sanction  and  assur- 
ance that  I  was  quite  safe  in  law;  and  I  would  have  given  up 
anything  than  have  got  into  bother  of  this  kind.  But  "  sich 
is  life." 

You  seem  to  have  been  making  a  Royal  Progress  in  Yankee- 
land.      We  have  been  uncommonly  tickled  with  some  of  the 
418 


i873  LETTER   TO  TYNDALL  415 

reports  of  your  lectures  which  reached  us,  especially  with  that 
which  spoke  of  your  having  "  a  strong  English  accent." 

The  loss  of  your  assistant  seems  to  have  been  the  only  de- 
duction to  be  made  from  your  success.  I  am  afraid  you  must 
have  felt  it  much  in  all  ways. 

"  My  Lord  "  received  your  telegram  only  after  the  business 
of  "  securing  Hirst "  was  done.  That  is  one  of  the  bright  spots 
in  a  bad  year  for  me.  Goschen  consulted  Spottiswoode  and  me 
independently  about  the  headship  of  the  new  Naval  College, 
and  was  naturally  considerably  surprised  by  the  fact  that  we 
coincided  in  recommending  Hirst.  .  .  .  The  upshot  was  that 
Goschen  asked  me  to  communicate  with  Hirst  and  see  if  he 
would  be  disposed  to  accept  the  offer.  So  I  did,  and  found  to 
my  great  satisfaction  that  Hirst  took  to  the  notion  very  kindly. 
I  am  sure  he  is  the  very  best  man  for  the  post  to  be  met  with 
in  the  three  kingdoms,  having  that  rare  combination  of  qualities 
by  which  he  gets  on  with  all  manner  of  men,  and  singularly 
attracts  young  fellows.  He  will  not  only  do  his  duty,  but  be 
beloved  for  doing  it,  which  is  what  few  people  can  compass. 

I  have  little  news  to  give  you.  The  tail  of  the  X.-Hooker 
storm  is  drifting  over  the  scientific  sky  in  the  shape  of  fresh 
attacks  by  Owen  on  Hooker.  Hooker  answered  the  last 
angelically,  and  I  hope  they  are  at  an  end. 

The  wife  has  just  come  in  and  sends  her  love  (but  is  careful 
to  add  "second-best").  The  chicks  grow  visibly  and  audibly, 
and  Jess  looks  quite  a  woman.  All  are  well  except  myself,  and  I 
am  getting  better  from  a  fresh  breakdown  of  dyspepsia.  I  find 
that  if  I  am  to  exist  at  all  it  must  be  on  strictly  ascetic  prin- 
ciples, so  there  is  hope  of  my  dying  in  the  odour  of  sanctity 
yet.  If  you  recollect,  Lancelot  did  not  know  that  he  should  "  die 
a  holy  man  "  till  rather  late  in  life.  I  have  forgotten  to  tell  you 
about  the  Rectorship  of  Aberdeen.  I  refused  to  stand  at  first, 
on  the  score  of  health,  and  only  consented  on  condition  that  I 
should  not  be  called  upon  to  do  any  public  work  until  after  the 
long  vacation.  It  was  a  very  hard  fight,  and  although  I  had  an 
absolute  majority  of  over  fifty,  the  mode  of  election  is  such  that 
one  vote,  in  one  of  the  four  nations,  would  have  turned  the 
scale  by  giving  my  opponent  the  majority  in  that  nation.  We 
should  then  have  been  ties,  and  as  the  chancellor,  who  has  under 
such  circumstances  a  casting  vote,  would  have  (I  believe)  given 
it  against  me,  I  should  have  been  beaten. 

As  it  is,  the  fact  of  anyone,  who  stinketh  in  the  nostrils  of 
orthodoxy,  beating  a  Scotch  peer  at  his  own  gates  in  the  most 


420  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvu 

orthodox  of  Scotch  cities,  is  a  curious  sign  of  the  times.  The 
reason  why  they  made  such  a  tremendous  fight  for  me,  is  I 
believe,  that  I  may  carry  on  the  reforms  commenced  by  Grant 
DuflF,  my  predecessor.  Unlike  other  Lord  Rectors,  he  of  Aber- 
deen is  a  power  and  can  practically  govern  the  action  of  the 
University  during  his  tenure  of  office. 

I  saw  Pollock  yesterday,  and  he  says  that  they  want  you 
back  again.  Curiously  the  same  desire  is  epidemically  prevalent 
among  your  friends,  not  least  here. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

In  spite  of  his  anxieties,  his  health  was  slowly  improving 
under  careful  regimen.  He  published  no  scientific  memoirs 
this  year,  but  in  addition  to  his  regular  lectures,  he  was 
working  to  finish  his  Manual  of  Invertebrate  Anatomy  and 
his  Introductory  Primer,  and  to  write  his  Aberdeen  address ; 
he  was  also  at  work  upon  the  Pedigree  of  the  Horse  and  on 
Bodily  Motion  and  Consciousness,  He  delivered  a  course  to 
teachers  on  Psychology  and  Physiology,  and  was  much 
occupied  by  the  Royal  Commission  on  Science.  As  a  gov- 
ernor of  Owens  College  he  had  various  meetings  to  attend, 
though  his  duties  did  not  extend,  as  some  of  his  friends 
seem  to  have  thought,  to  the  appointment  of  a  Professor 
of  Physiology  there. 

My  life  (he  writes  to  Sir  Henry  Roscoe)  is  becoming  a 

burden  to  me  because  of  .     Why  I  do  not  know,  but  for 

some  reason  people  have  taken  it  into  their  heads  that  I  have 
something  to  do  with  appointments  in  Owens  College,  and  no 
fewer  than  three  men  of  whose  opinion  I  think  highly  have 
spoken  or  written  to  me  urging *s  merits  very  strongly. 

This  summer  he  again  took  a  long  holiday,  thanks  to 
the  generosity  of  his  friends  (see  p.  394),  and  with  better 
results.  He  went  with  his  old  friend  Hooker  to  the  Au- 
verg^e,  walking,  geologising,  sketching  and  gradually  dis- 
carding doctor's  orders.  Sir  Joseph  Hooker  has  very  kindly 
written  me  a  letter  from  which  I  give  an  account  of  this 
trip : — 

It  was  during  the  many  excursions  we  took  together,  either 
by  ourselves  or  with  one  of  my  boys,  that  I  knew  him  best  at  his 
best;  and  especially  during  one  of  several  weeks'  duration  in 


1873  WITH   HOOKER  IN   THE  AUVERGNE  421 

the  summer  of  1873,  which  we  spent  in  central  France  and 
Germany.  He  had  been  seriously  ill,  and  was  suffering  from 
severe  mental  depression.  For  this  he  was  ordered  abroad  by 
his  physician,  Sir  A.  Clark,  to  which  step  he  offered  a  stubborn 
resistance.  With  Mrs.  Huxley's  approval,  and  being  myself 
quite  in  the  mood  for  a  holiday,  I  volunteered  to  wrestle  with 
him,  and  succeeded,  holding  out  as  an  inducement  a  visit  to  the 
volcanic  region  of  the  Auvergne  with  Scrope's  classical  volume, 
which  we  both  knew  and  admired,  as  a  guide  book. 

We  started  on  July  2nd,  I  loaded  with  injunctions  from  his 
physician  as  to  what  his  patient  was  to  eat,  drink,  and  avoid, 
how  much  he  was  to  sleep  and  rest,  how  little  to  talk  and  walk, 
etc.,  that  would  have  made  the  expedition  a  perpetual  burthen 
to  me  had  I  not  believed  that  I  knew  enough  of  my  friend's  dis- 
position and  ailments  to  be  convinced  that  not  only  health  but 
happiness  would  be  our  companions  throughout  Sure  enough, 
for  the  first  few  days,  including  a  short  stay  in  Paris,  his  spirits 
were  low  indeed,  but  this  gave  nie  the  opportunity  of  appreciat- 
ing his  remarkable  command  over  himself  and  his  ever-present 
consideration  for  his  companion.  Not  a  word  or  gesture  of  irri- 
tation ever  escaped  him;  he  exerted  himself  to  obey  the  in- 
structions laid  down ;  nay,  more,  he  was  instant  in  his  endeavour 
to  save  me  trouble  at  hotels,  railway  stations,  and  ticket  offices. 
Still,  some  mental  recreation  was  required  to  expedite  recovery, 
and  he  found  it  first  by  picking  up  at  a  bookstall,  a  History  of 
the  Miracles  of  Lourdes,  which  were  then  exciting  the  religious 
fervour  of  France,  and  the  interest  of  her  scientific  public.  He 
entered  with  enthusiasm  into  the  subject,  getting  together  all 
the  treatises  upon  it,  favourable  or  the  reverse,  that  were  acces- 
sible, and  I  need  hardly  add,  soon  arrived  at  the  conclusion, 
that  the  so-called  miracles  were  in  part  illusions  and  for  the 
rest  delusions.  As  it  may  interest  some  of  your  readers  to 
know  what  his  opinion  was  in  this  the  early  stage  of  the  mani- 
festations, I  will  give  it  as  he  gave  it  to  me.  It  was  a  case  of 
two  peasant  children  sent  in  the  hottest  month  of  the  year  into 
a  hot  valley  to  collect  sticks  for  firewood  washed  up  by  a  stream, 
when  one  of  them  after  stooping  down  opposite  a  heat-rever- 
berating rock,  was,  in  rising,  attacked  with  a  transient  vertigo, 
under  which  she  saw  a  figure  in  white  against  the  rock.  This  bare 
fact  being  reported  to  the  cure  of  the  village,  all  the  rest  followed. 

Soon  after  our  arrival  at  Clermont  Ferrand,  your  father  had 
so  far  recovered  his  wonted  elasticity  of  spirits  that  he  took 
a  keen  interest  in  everything  around,  the  museums,  the  cathedral. 


422  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxvn 

where  he  enjoyed  the  conclusion  of  the  service  by  a  military 
band  which  gave  selections  from  the  Figlia  del  Regimento,  but 
above  all  he  appreciated  the  walks  and  drives  to  the  geological 
features  of  the  environs.  He  reluctantly  refrained  from  ascend- 
ing the  Puy  de  Dome,  but  managed  the  Pic  Parion,  Gergovia, 
Royat,  and  other  points  of  interest  without  fatigue.  .  .  . 

After  Qermont  they  visited  the  other  four  great  volcanic 
areas  explored  by  Scrope,  Mont  Dore,  the  Cantal,  Le  Puy, 
and  the  valley  of  the  Ardeche.  Under  the  care  of  his 
friend,  and  relieved  from  the  strain  of  work,  my  father's 
health  rapidly  improved.  He  felt  no  bad  effects  from  a 
night  at  Mont  Dore,  when,  owing  to  the  crowd  of  invalids 
in  the  little  town,  no  better  accommodation  could  be  found 
than  a  couple  of  planks  in  a  cupboard.  Next  day  they 
took  up  their  quarters  in  an  unpretentious  cabaret  at  La 
Tour  d'Auvergne,  one  of  the  villages  on  the  slopes  of  the 
mountain,  a  few  miles  away. 

Here  (writes  Sir  J.  Hooker),  and  for  some  time  afterwards, 
on  our  further  travels,  we  had  many  interesting  and  amusing 
experiences  of  rural  life  in  the  wilder  parts  of  central  France, 
its  poverty,  penury,  and  too  often  its  inconceivable  impositions 
and  overcharges  to  foreigners,  quite  consistently  with  good  feel- 
ing, politeness,  and  readiness  to  assist  in  many  ways. 

By  the  loth  of  July,  nine  days  after  setting  out,  I  felt  satis- 
fied (he  continues)  that  your  father  was  equal  to  an  excursion 
upon  which  he  had  set  his  heart,  to  the  top  of  the  Pic  de  Sancy, 
4000  feet  above  La  Tour  and  7  miles  distant. 

It  was  on  this  occasion  that  the  friends  made  what  they 
thought  a  new  discovery,  namely  evidence  of  glacial  action 
in  central  France.  Besides  striated  stones  in  the  fields  or 
built  into  the  walls,  they  noticed  the  glaciated  appearance 
of  one  of  the  valleys  descending  from  the  peak,  and  espe- 
cially some  isolated  gigantic  masses  of  rock  on  an  open  part 
of  the  valley,  several  miles  away,  as  to  which  they  debated 
whether  they  were  low  buildings  or  transported  blocks.  Sir 
Joseph  visited  them  next  day,  and  found  they  were  the  latter, 
brought  down  from  the  upper  part  of  the  peak.* 

*  He  published  an  account  of  these  blocks  in  Nature^  xiii.  31,  166, 
but  subsequently  found  that  glaciation  had  been  observed  by  von 
Lassaul  in  1872  and  by  Sir  William  Guise  in  1870. 


i873  TOUR   IN   THE  AUVERGNE  423 

Le  Puy  offered  a  special  attraction  apart  from  scenery 
and  geology.  In  the  museum  was  the  skeleton  of  a  pre- 
historic man  that  had  been  found  in  the  breccia  of  the 
neighbourhood,  associated  with  the  remains  of  the  rhinoce- 
ros, elephant,  and  other  extinct  mammals.  My  father's 
sketch-book  contains  drawings  of  these  bones  and  of  the 
ravine  where  they  were  discovered,  although  in  spite  of 
directions  from  M.  Aymard,  the  curator,  he  could  not  find 
the  exact  spot.  Under  the  sketch  is  a  description  of  the 
remains,  in  which  he  notes,  "  The  bones  do  not  look  fresher 
than  some  of  those  of  Elephas  and  Rhinoceros  in  the  same 
or  adjacent  cases." 

As  for  the  final  stage  of  the  excursion : — 

After  leaving  the  Ardeche  (continues  Sir  J.  Hooker),  with 
no  Scrope  to  lead  or  follow,  our  scientific  ardours  collapsed.  We 
had  vague  views  as  to  future  travel.  Whatever  one  proposed 
was  unhesitatingly  acceded  to  by  the  other.  A  more  happy-go- 
lucky  pair  of  idlers  never  joined  company. 

As  will  be  seen  from  the  following  letters,  they  made 
their  way  to  the  Black  Forest,  where  they  stayed  till  Sir 
Joseph's  duties  called  him  back  to  England,  and  my 
mother  came  out  to  join  my  father  for  the  rest  of  his 
holiday.* 

*  You  ask  me  (Sir  Joseph  adds)  whether  your  father  smoked  on  the 
occasion  of  this  tour.  Yes,  he  did,  cigars  in  moderation.  But  the 
history  of  his  addiction  to  tobacco  that  grew  upon  him  later  in  life, 
dates  from  an  earlier  excursion  that  we  took  together,  and  I  was  the 
initiator  of  the  practice.  It  happened  in  this  wise :  he  had  been 
suffering  from  what  was  supposed  to  be  gastric  irritation,  and,  being 
otherwise  "  run  down,"  we  agreed  to  go,  in  company  with  Sir  John 
Lubbock,  on  a  tour  to  visit  the  great  monoliths  of  Brittany.  This 
was  in  1867.  On  arriving  at  Dinan  he  suffered  so  much  that  I  recom- 
mended his  trying  a  few  cigarettes  which  I  had  with  me.  They  acted 
as  a  charm,  and  this  led  to  cigars,  and  finally,  about  1875  I  think,  to 
the  pipe.  That  he  subsequently  carried  the  use  of  tobacco  to  excess 
is,  I  think,  unquestionable.  I  repeatedly  remonstrated  with  him,  at 
last  I  think  (by  backing  his  medical  adviser)  with  effect. 

I  have  never  blamed  myself  for  the  "  teaching  him  "  to  smoke,  for 
the  practice  habitually  palliated  his  distressing  symptoms  when  noth- 
ing else  did,  nor  can  his  chronic  illness  be  attributed  to  the  abuse  of 
tobacco. 

28 


424 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvii 


The  following  letters  to  Sir  H.  Roscoe  and  Dr.  Tyndall 
were  written  during  this  tour : — 

Lk  Puy,  Haute  Loire,  France, 
July  17,  1873. 

My  dear  Roscoe — Your  very  kind  letter  reached  me  just  as 
I  was  in  the  hurry  of  getting  away  from  England,  and  I  have 
been  carrying  it  about  in  my  pocket  ever  since. 

Hooker  and  I  have  been  having  a  charming  time  of  it 
among  the  volcanoes  of  the  Auvergne,  and  we  are  now  on  our 
way  to  those  of  the  Velay  and  Vivarrais.  The  weather  has  been 
almost  perfect  Perhaps  a  few  degrees  of  temperature  could 
have  been  spared  now  and  then,  especially  at  Clermont,  of  which 
somebody  once  said  that  having  stayed  there  the  climate  of  hell 
would  have  no  terrors  for  him. 

It  has  been  warm  in  the  Mont  Dore  country  and  in  the 
Cantal,  as  it  is  here,  but  we  are  very  high  up,  and  there  is  a 
charming  freshness  and  purity  about  die  air. 

I  do  not  expect  to  be  back  before  the  end  of  September,  and 
my  lectures  begin  somewhere  in  the  second  week  of  October. 
After  they  commence  I  shall  not  be  able  to  leave  London  even 
for  a  day,  but  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  come  to  the  inaugura- 
tion of  your  new  buildings  if  the  ceremony  falls  within  my 
possible  time.  And  you  know  I  am  always  glad  to  be  your 
guest. 

I  am  thriving  wonderfully.  Indeed  all  that  plagues  me  now 
is  my  conscience,  for  idling  about  when  I  feel  full  of  vigour. 
But  I  promised  to  be  obedient,  and  I  am  behaving  better  than 
Auld  Clootie  did  when  he  fell  sick. 

I  hope  you  are  routing  out  the  gout.  This  would  be  the 
place  for  you — any  quantity  of  mineral  waters. 

Pray  remember  me  very  kindly  to  Mrs.  Roscoe,  and  believe 
me,  ever  yours  very  faithfully,  t.  H.  Huxley. 

Hotel  de  France,  Baden-Baden, 
July  30,  1873. 
My  dear  Tyndall — We  find  ourselves  here  after  a  very 
successful  cruise  in  the  Auvergne  and  Ardeche,  successful  at 
least  so  far  as  beauty  and  geological  interest  go.  The  heat  was 
killing,  and  obliged  Us  to  give  up  all  notion  of  going  to  Ursines, 
as  we  had  at  first  intended  to  do.  So  we  turned  our  faces  north 
and  made  for  Grenoble,  hoping  for  a  breath  of  cool  air  from  the 
mountains  of  Dauphiny.     But  Grenoble  was  hotter  even  than 


1 873  LETTERS  FROM   ABROAD  425 

Clermont  (which,  by  the  way,  quite  deserves  its  reputation  as 
a  competitor  with  hell),  a  neighbour's  drains  were  adrift  close 
to  the  hotel,  and  we  got  poisoned  before  we  could  escape. 
Luckily  we  got  off  with  nothing  worse  than  a  day  or  two's  diar- 
rhoea. After  this  the  best  thing  seemed  to  be  to  rush  northward 
to  Gemsbach,  which  had  been  described  to  me  as  a  sort  of 
earthly  paradise.  We  reached  the  place  last  Saturday  night, 
and  found  ourselves  in  a  big  rambling  hotel,  crammed  full  of 
people,  and  planted  in  the  bottom  of  a  narrow  valley,  all  hot 
and  steaming.  A  large  pigstye  "  convenient "  to  the  house 
mingled  its  vapours  with  those  of  the  seventy  or  eighty  people 
who  eat  and  drank  without  any  other  earthly  occupation  that 
we  could  discern  during  the  three  days  we  were  bound,  by  stress 
of  letters  and  dirty  linen,  to  stop.  On  Monday  we  made  an 
excursion  over  here,  prospecting,  and  the  air  was  so  fresh  and 
good,  and  things  in  general  looked  so  promising  that  I  made  up 
my  mind  to  put  up  in  Baden-Baden  until  the  wife  joins  me.  She 
writes  me  that  you  talk  of  leaving  England  on  Friday,  and  I 
may  remark  that  Baden  is  on  the  high  road  to  Switzerland. 
Verbum  sap, 

I  am  wonderfully  better,  and  really  feel  ashamed  of  loafing 
about  when  I  might  very  well  be  at  work.  But  I  have  promised 
to  make  holiday,  and  make  holiday  I  will. 

No  proof  of  your  answer  to  Forbes*  biographer  reached  me 
before  I  left,  so  I  suppose  you  had  not  received  one  in  time.  I 
am  dying  to  see  it  out. 

Hooker  is  down  below,  but  I  take  upon  myself  to  send  his 
love.  He  is  in  great  force  now  that  he  has  got  rid  of  his 
Grenoble  mulligrubs. — Ever  yours,  _.   _. 

After  parting  company  with  Hooker,  he  paid  a  flying 
visit  to  Professor  Bonnet  at  Geneva ;  then  he  was  joined  by 
his  wife  and  son  for  the  last  three  weeks  of  the  holiday, 
which  were  spent  at  Baden  and  in  the  Bernese  Oberland. 
Before  this,  he  writes  home : — 

I  feel  quite  a  different  man  from  what  I  was  two  months  ago, 
and  you  will  say  that  you  have  a  much  more  creditable  husband 
than  the  broken-down  old  fellow  who  has  been  a  heart-ache  to 
you  so  long,  when  you  see  me.  The  sooner  you  can  get  away 
the  better.  \i  the  rest  only  does  you  as  much  good  as  it  does 
me,  I  shall  be  very  happy. 


426  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxva 

AxENSTEiN,  Luzerne,  Aug.  24,  1873. 

My  dear  Tyndall — The  copies  of  your  booklet*  intended 
for  Hooker  and  me  reached  me  just  as  I  left  Baden  last  Tuesday. 
Hooker  had  left  me  for  home  a  fortnight  before,  and  I  hardly 
know  whether  to  send  his  to  Kew  or  keep  them  for  him  till  I 
return.  I  have  read  mine  twice,  and  I  think  that  nothing  coidd 
be  better  than  the  tone  you  have  adopted.  I  did  not  suspect 
that  you  had  such  a  shot  in  your  locker  as  the  answer  to  Forbes  » 
about  the  direction  of  the  "  crevasses  "  referred  to  by  Rendu. 
It  is  a  deadly  thrust ;  and  I  shall  be  curious  to  see  what  sort  of 
parry  the  other  side  will  attempt.  For  of  course  they  will 
attempt  something.  Scotland  is,  I  believe,  the  only  country  in 
the  world  in  which  you  can  bring  an  action  for  "  putting  to 
silence  "  an  adversary  who  will  go  on  with  an  obviously  hope- 
less suit.  The  lawgivers  knew  the  genius  of  the  people;  and 
it  is  to  be  regretted  that  they  could  not  establish  a  process  of 
the  same  sort  in  scientific  matters. 

I  wrote  to  you  a  month  ago  to  tell  you  how  we  had  been 
getting  on  in  France.  Hooker  and  I  were  very  jolly,  notwith- 
standing the  heat,  and  I  think  that  the  Vivarrais  is  the  most 
instructive  country  in  the  world  for  seeing  what  water  can  do 
in  cutting  down  the  hardest  rocks.  Scrope*s  book  is  very  good 
on  the  whole,  though  the  pictures  are  a  little  overdone. 

My  wife  and  Leonard  met  me  at  Cologne  on  the  nth.  Then 
we  went  on  to  Baden  and  rested  till  last  Tuesday,  when  we 
journeyed  to  Luzerne  and,  getting  out  of  that  hot  and  un- 
savoury hole  as  fast  as  we  could,  came  here  last  Thursday. 

We  find  ourselves  very  well  off.  The  hotel  is  perched  up  180 
feet  abovfe  the  lake,  with  a  beautiful  view  of  Pilatus  on  the  west 
and  of  the  Umer  See  on  the  south.  On  the  north  we  have  the 
Schwyz  valley,  so  that  we  are  not  shut  in,  and  the  air  is  very 
good  and  fresh.  There  are  plenty  of  long  walks  to  be  had 
without  much  fatigue,  which  suits  the  wife.  Leonard  promises 
to  have  very  good  legs  of  his  own  with  plenty  of  staying  power. 
I  have  given  him  one  or  two  sharp  walks,  and  I  find  he*  has 
plenty  of  vigour  and  endurance.  But  he  is  not  thirteen  yet  and 
I  do  not  mean  to  let  him  do  overmuch,  though  we  are  bent  on  a 
visit  to  a  glacier.  I  began  to  tell  him  something  about  the 
glaciers  the  other  day,  but  I  was  promptly  shut  up  with,  "  Oh, 
yes!  I  know  all  about  that.  It's  in  Dr.  Tyndall's  book" — 
which  said  book  he  seems  to  me  to  have  got  by  heart.     He  is 

♦  **  Principal  Forbes  and  his  Biographers.** 


1873  LETTER   TO   HIS  WIFE  427 

the  sweetest  little  fellow  imaginable ;  and  either  he  has  developed 
immensely  in  the  course  of  the  last  year,  or  I  have  never  been 
so  much  thrown  together  with  him  alone,  and  have  not  had  the 
opportunity  of  making  him  out. 

You  are  a  fatherly  old  bachelor,  and  will  not  think  me  a 
particularly  great  donkey  for  prattling  on  in  this  way  about  my 
swan,  who  probably  to  unprejudiced  eyes  has  a  power  of  goose 
about  him. 

I  suppose  you  know  that  in  company  with  yourself  and 
Hooker,  the  paternal  gander  (T.  H.  H.)  has  been  honoured  by 
the  King  of  Sweden  and  made  into  a  Polar  Goose  by  the  order 
of  the  North  Star.  Hooker  has  explained  to  the  Swedish  Am- 
bassador that  English  officials  are  prohibited  by  order  in  Council 
from  accepting  foreign  orders,  and  I  believe  keeps  the  cross 
and  ribbon  on  these  conditions.  If  it  were  an  ordinary  decora- 
tion I  should  decline  with  thanks,  but  I  am  told  it  is  a  purely 
scientific  and  literary  affair  like  the  Prussian  "  pour  le  merite  " ; 
so  when  I  get  back  I  shall  follow  Hooker's  line. 

I  met  Laugel  on  board  the  Luzerne  steamboat  the  other  day, 
and  he  told  me  that  you  were  at  the  Belalp — gallivanting  as 
usual,  and  likely  to  remain  there  for  some  time.  So  I  send  this 
on  the  chance  of  finding  you.  With  best  love  from  us  all,  ever 
yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  am  as  well  as  I  ever  was  in  my  life — regularly  set  up— 
in  token  whereof  I  have  shaved  off  my  beard. 

In  another  letter  to  his  wife,  dated  August  8,  from  Baden, 
there  is  a  very  interesting  passage  about  himself  and  his 
aims.  He  has  just  been  speaking  about  his  son's  doings 
at  school : — 

I  have  been  having  a  great  deal  of  talk  with  myself  about 
my  future  career  too,  and  I  have  often  thought  over  what  you 
say  in  the  letter  you  wrote  to  the  Puy.  I  don't  quite  under- 
stand what  meant  about  the  disputed  reputation,  unless 

it  is  a  reputation  for  getting  into  disputes.  But  to  say  truth  I 
am  not  greatly  concerned  about  any  reputation  except  that  of 
being  entirely  honest  and  straightforward,  and  that  reputation 
I  think  and  hope  I  have. 

For  the  rest  ...  the  part  I  have  to  play  is  not  to  found  a 
new  school  of  thought  or  to  reconcile  the  antagonisms  of  the 
old  schools.  We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  gigantic  movement 
greater  than  that  which  preceded  and  produced  the  Reformation, 


428 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvh 


and  really  only  the  continuation  of  that  movement.  But  there 
is  nothing  new  in  the  ideas  which  lie  at  the  bottom  of  the 
movement,  nor  is  any  reconcilement  possible  between  free 
thought  and  traditional  authority.  One  or  other  will  have  to 
succumb  after  a  struggle  of  unknown  duration,  which  will  have 
as  side  issues  vast  political  and  social  troubles.  I  have  no  more 
doubt  that  free  thought  will  win  in  the  long  run  than  I  have 
that  I  sit  here  writing  to  you,  or  that  this  free  thought  will 
organise  itself  into  a  coherent  system,  embracing  human  life 
and  the  world  as  one  harmonious  whole.  But  this  organisation 
will  be  the  work  of  generations  of  men,  and  those  who  further 
it  most  will  be  those  who  teach  men  to  rest  in  no  lie,  and  to 
rest  in  no  verbal  delusions.  I  may  be  able  to  help  a  little  in 
this  direction — perhaps  I  may  have  helped  already.  For  the 
present,  however,  I  am  disposed  to  draw  myself  back  entirely 
into  my  own  branch  of  physical  science.  There  is  enough  and 
to  spare  for  me  to  do  in  that  line,  and,  for  years  to  come,  I  do 
not  mean  to  be  tempted  out  of  it. 

Strangely  enough,  this  was  the  one  thing  he  was  des- 
tined not  to  do.  Official  work  multiplied  about  him.  From 
1870  to  1884  only  two  years  passed  without  his  serving  on 
one  or  two  Royal  Commissions.  He  was  Secretary  of  the 
Royal  Society  from  1871  to  1880,  and  President  from  1883 
to  his  retirement,  owing  to  ill-health,  in  1885.  He  became 
Dean  as  well  as  Professor  of  Biology  in  the  College  of 
Science,  and  Inspector  of  Fisheries.  Though  he  still  man- 
aged to  find  some  time  for  anatomical  investigations,  and 
would  steal  a  precious  hour  or  half  hour  by  driving  back 
from  the  Home  Office  to  his  laboratory  at  South  Kensing- 
ton before  returning  home  to  St.  John's  Wood,  the  amount 
of  such  work  as  he  was  able  to  publish  could  not  be  very 
great. 

His  most  important  contributions  during  this  decennium 
(writes  Sir  M.  Foster)  were  in  part  continuations  of  his  former 
labours,  such  as  the  paper  and  subsequent  full  memoir  on 
Stagonolepis,  which  appeared  in  1875  and  1877,  and  papers  on 
the  Skull.  The  facts  that  he  called  a  communication  to  the 
Royal  Society,  in  1875,*  o"  Amphioxus,  a  preliminary  note, 
and  that  a  paper  read  to  the  Zoological  Society  in  1876,  on 

♦  Written  1874. 


i873  SCIENTIFIC   WORK   AFTER   1870  429 

Ceratodus  Forsteri,  was  marked  No.  i  of  the  series  of  Con- 
tributions to  Morphology,  showed  that  he  still  had  before  him 
the  prospect  of  much  anatomical  work,  to  be  accomplished  when 
opportunity  offered ;  but,  alas  I  the  opportunity  which  came  was 
small,  the  preliminary  note  had  no  full  successor,  and  No.  i 
was  only  followed,  and  that  after  an  interval  of  seven  years, 
by  a  brief  No.  2.  A  paper  "On  the  Characters  of  the  Pelvis," 
in  the  Proceedings  of  the  Royal  Society,  in  1879,  *s  full  of  sug- 
gestive thought,  but  its  concluding  passages  seem  to  suggest 
that  others,  and  not  he  himself,  were  to  carry  out  the  ideas. 
Most  of  the  papers  of  this  decennium  deal  with  vertebrate  mor- 
phology, and  are  more  or  less  connected  with  his  former  re- 
searches, but  in  one  respect,  at  least,  he  broke  quite  fresh 
ground.  He  had  chosen  the  crayfish  as  one  of  the  lessons  for 
the  class  in  general  biology  spoken  of  above,  and  was  thus 
drawn  into  an  interesting  study  of  crayfishes,  by  which  he  was 
led  to  a  novel  and  important  analysis  of  the  gill  plumes  as  evi- 
dence of  affinity  and  separation.  He  embodied  the  main  results 
of  his  studies  in  a  paper  to  the  Zoological  Society,  and  treated 
the  whole  subject  in  a  more  popular  style  in  a  book  on  the 
Crayfish.  In  a  somewhat  similar  way,  having  taken  the  dog  as 
an  object  lesson  in  mammalian  anatomy  for  his  students,  he  was 
led  to  a  closer  study  of  that  common  animal,  resulting  in  papers 
on  that  subject  to*  the  Zoological  Society  in  1880,  and  in  two 
lectures  at  the  Royal  Institution  in  1880.  He  had  intended  so 
to  develop  this  study  of  the  dog  as  to  make  it  tell  the  tale  of 
mammalian  morphologjy;  but  this  purpose,  too,  remained  unac- 
complished. 

Moreover,  though  he  sent  one  paper  (on  Hyperodapedon 
Gordoni)  to  the  Geological  Society  as  late  as  1887,  yet  the 
complete  breakdown  of  his  health  in  1885,  which  released 
him  from  nearly  all  his  official  duties,  at  the  same  time 
dulled  his  ardour  for  anatomical  pursuits.  Stooping  over 
his  work  became  an  impossibility. 

Though  he  carried  about  him,  as  does  every  man  of  like 
calibre  and  experience,  a  heavy  load  of  fragments  of  inquiry 
begun  but  never  finished,  and  as  heavy  a  load  of  ideas  for  prom- 
ising investigations  never  so  much  as  even  touched,  though  his 
love  of  science  and  belief  in  it  might  never  have  wavered,  though 
he  never  doubted  the  value  of  the  results  which  further  research 
would  surely  bring  him,  there  was  something  working  within 


430 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvii 


him  which  made  his  hand,  when  turned  to  anatomical  science, 
so  heavy  that  he  could  not  lift  it.  Not  even  that  which  was  so 
strong  within  him,  the  duty  of  fulfilling  a  promise,  could  bring 
him  to  the  work.  In  his  room  at  South  Kensington,  where  for 
a  quarter  of  a  century  he  had  laboured  with  such  brilliant  effect, 
there  lay  on  his  working  table  for  months,  indeed  for  years, 
partly  dissected  specimens  of  the  rare  and  little  studied  marine 
animal,  Spirula,  of  which  he  had  promised  to  contribute  an 
account  to  the  Reports  of  the  "  Challenger "  Expedition,  and 
hard  by  lay  the  already  engraven  plates;  there  was  still  wanted 
nothing  more  than  some  further  investigation  and  the  working 
out  of  the  results.  But  it  seemed  as  if  some  hidden  hands  were 
always  being  stretched  out  to  keep  him  from  the  task;  and 
eventually  another  labourer  had  to  complete  it.     (Ibid.) 

The  remaining  letters  of  this  year  include  several  to  Dr. 
Dohm,  which  show  the  continued  interest  my  father  took  in 
the  great  project  of  the  Biological  Station  at  Naples,  which 
was  carried  through  in  spite  of  many  difficulties.  He  had 
various  books  and  proceedings  of  learned  societies  sent  out 
at  Dr.  Dohm's  request  (I  omit  the  details)  and  proposed  a 
scheme  for  raising  funds  towards  completing  the  building 
when  the  contractor  failed.  The  scheme^  however,  was  not 
put  into  execution. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Ffd.  24,  1873. 

My  dear  Dohrn — I  was  very  glad  to  receive  the  fine  sealed 
letter,  and  to  get  some  news  of  you — though  to  be  sure  there  is 
not  much  of  you  in  the  letter,  but  all  is  "  Station,  Station." 

I  congratulate  you  heartily  on  your  success  with  your  under- 
taking, and  I  only  wish  I  could  see  England  represented  among 
the  applicants  for  tables.  But  you  see  England  is  so  poor,  and 
the  present  price  of  coals  obliges  her  to  economise. 

I  envy  you  your  visit  from  "  Pater  Anchises "  Baer,  and 
rejoice  to  hear  that  the  grand  old  man  is  well  and  strong  enough 
to  entertain  such  a  project.  I  wish  I  could  see  my  way  to  doing 
the  like.  I  have  had  a  long  bout  of  illness — ever  since  August 
— ^but  I  am  now  very  much  better,  indeed,  I  hope  I  may  say  quite 
well.  The  weariness  of  all  this  has  been  complicated  by  the 
trouble  of  getting  into  a  new  house,  and  in  addition  a  law-suit 
brought  by  a  knavish  neighbour,  in  the  hope  of  extracting  money 
out  of  me. 

I  am  happy  to  say,  however,  that  he  has  just  been  thoroughly 
and  effectually  defeated.    It  has  been  a  new  experience  for  me, 


1873  LETTERS  TO   DOHRN  431 

and  I  hope  it  may  be  my  last  as  well  as  my  first  acquaintance 
with  English  law,  which  is  a  luxury  of  the  most  expensive 
character. 

If  Dr.  KJeinenberg  is  with  you,  please  to  tell  him,  with  my 
compliments  and  thanks  for  the  copy  of  his  Memoir,  that  I  went 
over  his  Hydra  paper  pretty  carefully  in  the  summer,  and  satis- 
fied myself  as  to  the  correctness  of  his  statements  about  the 
structure  of  the  ectoderm  and  about  the  longitudinal  fibres. 
About  the  Endoderm  I  am  not  so  clear,  and  I  often  found  indi- 
cations of  delicate  circular  fibres  in  close  apposition  with  the 
longitudinal  ones.  However,  I  had  not  time  to  work  all  this 
out,  and  perhaps  might  as  well  say  nothing  about  it. 

Pray  make  my  very  kind  remembrances  to  Mr.  Grant.  I 
trust  that  his  dramas  may  have  a  brilliant  reception. 

The  Happy  Family  flourishes.  But  we  shall  look  to  your 
coming  to  see  us.  The  house  is  big  enough  now  to  give  you  a 
bedroom,  and  you  know  you  will  have  no  lack  of  a  welcome. 

I  have  said  nothing  about  my  wife  (who  has  been  in  a  state 
not  only  of  superhuman,  but  of  superfeminine,  activity  for  the 
last  three  months)  meaning  to  leave  her  the  last  page  to  speak 
for  herself. 

With  best  compliments  to  the  "  ladies  downstairs,"  ever 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Oct.  17.  1873. 

My  dear  Dohrn — ^Your  letter  reached  me  nearly  a  week 
ago,  and  I  have  been  turning  over  its  contents  in  my  mind  as 
well  as  I  could,  but  have  been  able  to  come  to  no  clear  conclu- 
sion until  now.  I  have  been  incessantly  occupied  with  other 
things. 

I  will  do  for  you,  and  gladly,  anything  I  would  do  for  my- 
self, but  I  could  not  apply  on  my  own  behalf  to  any  of  those  rich 
countrymen  of  mine,  unless  they  were  personally  well  known  to 
me,  and  I  had  the  opportunity  of  feeling  my  way  with  them. 
But  if  you  are  disposed  to  apply  to  any  of  the  people  you  men- 
tion, I  shall  be  only  too  glad  to  back  your  application  with  all  the 
force  I  am  master  of.  You  may  make  use  of  my  name  to  any 
extent  as  guarantor  of  the  scientific  value  and  importance  of 
your  undertaking  and  refer  anyone  to  whom  you  may  apply  to 
me.  It  may  be,  in  fact,  that  this  is  all  you  want,  but  as  you 
have  taken  to  the  caprice  of  writing  in  my  tongue  instead  of  in 
that  vernacular,  idiomatic  and  characteristically  Dohrnian  Ger- 
man, in  which  I  delight,  I  am  not  so  sure  about  your  meaning. 


432  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvii 

There  is  a  rub  for  you.  If  you  write  to  me  in  English  again  I 
will  send  the  letter  back  without  paying  the  postage. 

In  any  case  let  me  have  a  precise  statement  of  your  financia] 
position.  I  may  have  a  chance  of  talking  to  some  Croesus,  and 
the  first  question  he  is  sure  to  ask  me  is — How  am  I  to  know 
that  this  is  a  stable  affair,  and  that  I  am  not  throwing  my  money 
into  the  sea?  .  .  . 

(Referring  to  an  unpleasant  step  it  seemed  necessary  to 
take)  .  .  .  you  must  make  up  your  mind  to  act  decidedly  and 
take  the  consequences.  No  good  is  ever  done  in  this  world 
by  hesitation.  .  .  . 

I  hope  you  are  physically  better.  Look  sharply  after  your 
diet,  take  exercise  and  defy  the  blue-devils,  and  you  will  weather 
the  storm. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Tyndall,  who  had  not  attended  the  1873  meeting  of  the 
British  Association,  had  heard  that  some  local  opposition 
had  been  offered  to  his  election  as  President  for  the  Belfast 
meeting  in  1874,  and  had  written : — 

I  wish  to  heaven  you  had  not  persuaded  me  to  accept  that 
Belfast  duty.  They  do  not  want  me.  .  .  .  But  Spottiswoode 
assures  me  that  no  individual  offered  the  slightest  support  to 
the  two  unscientific  persons  who  showed  opposition. 

The  following  was  written  in  reply : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Sept,  25,  1873. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  am  sure  you  are  mistaken  about  the 

Belfast  people.    That  blundering  idiot  of wanted  to  make 

himself  important  and  get  up  a  sort  of  "  Home  Rule  "  agitation 
in  the  Association,  but  nobody  backed  him  and  he  collapsed.  I 
am  at  your  disposition  for  whatever  you  want  me  to  do,  as  you 
know,  and  I  am  sure  Hooker  is  of  the  same  mind.  We  shall  not 
be  ashamed  when  we  meet  our  enemies  in  the  gate. 

The  grace  of  God  cannot  entirely  have  deserted  you  since 
you  are  aware  of  the  temperature  of  that  ferocious  epistle. 
Reeks,*  whom  I  saw  yesterday,  was  luxuriating  in  it,  and  said 
(confound  his  impudence)  that  it  was  quite  my  style.  I  forgot 
to  tell  him,  by  the  bye,  that  I  had  resigned  in  your  favour  ever 
since  the  famous  letter  to  Carpenter.  Well,  so  long  as  you  are 
better  after  it  there  is  no  great  harm  done. 

*  The  late  Trenham  Reeks,  Registrar  of  the  School  of  Mines,  and 
Curator  of  the  Museum  of  Practical  Geology. 


i873  IMPROVEMENT   IN   HEALTH  433 

Somebody  has  sent  me  the  two  numbers  of  Scribner  with 
Blauvelt*s  articles  on  **  Modern  Skepticism."  They  seem  to  be 
very  well  done,  and  he  has  a  better  appreciation  of  the  toughness 
of  the  job  before  him  than  any  of  the  writers  of  his  school  with 
whom  I  have  met.  But  it  is  rather,  cool  of  you  to  talk  of  his 
pitching  into  Spencer  when  you  are  chief  target  yourself.  I 
come  in  only  par  parenthhe,  and  I  am  glad  to  see  that  people 
are  beginning  to  understand  my  real  position,  and  to  separate 
me  from  such  raging  infidels  as  you  and  Spencer. — Ever  thine, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

He  was  unable  to  attend  the  opening  of  Owens  College 
this  autumn,  and  having  received  but  a  scanty  account  of 
the  proceedings,  wrote  as  follows: — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  London,  N.W., 
Oct,  16,  1873. 

My  dear  Roscoe — I  consider  myself  badly  used.  Nobody 
has  sent  me  a  Manchester  paper  with  the  proceedings  of  the 
day  of  inauguration  when,  I  hear,  great  speeches  were  made. 

I  did  get  two  papers  containing  your  opening  lecture,  and  the 
"  Fragment  of  a  Morality,"  for  which  I  am  duly  grateful,  but 
two  copies  of  one  day's  proceedings  are  not  the  same  thing  as 
one  copy  of  two  days'  proceedings,  and  I  consider  it  is  very 
disrespectful  to  a  Governor  (large  G)  not  to  let  him  know  what 
went  on. 

By  all  accounts  which  have  reached  me  it  was  a  great  suc- 
cess, and  I  congratulate  you  heartily.  I  only  wish  that  I  could 
have  been  there  to  see. — Ever  yours  very  faitfifuUy, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  autumn  brought  a  slow  improvement  in  health — 

I  am  travelling  (he  writes)  between  the  two  stations  of 
dyspepsia  and  health  thus  (illustrated  by  a  zigzag  with  "  mean 
line  ascending"). 

The  sympathy  of  the  convalescent  appears  in  various 
letters  to  friends  who  were  ill.  Thus,  in  reply  to  Mr.  Hyde 
Clarke,  the  philologist  and,  like  himself,  a  member  of  the 
Ethnological  Society,  he  writes : — 

(Nov.  18,  1873) — I  am  glad  to  learn  two  things  from  your 
note — ^first,  that  you  are  getting  better;  second,  that  there  is 


434  LI^E  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxvii 

hope  of  some  good  coming  out  of  that  Ashantee  row,  if  only 
in  the  shape  of  rare  vocables. 

My  attention  is  quite  turned  away  from  Anthropological 
matters  at  present,  but  I  will  bear  your  question  in  mind  if 
opportunity  offers. 

A  letter  to  Professor  Rolleston  at  Oxford  gives  a  lively 
account  of  his  own  ailments,  which  could  only  have  been 
written  by  one  now  recovering  from  them,  while  the  illness 
of  another  friend  raised  a  delicate  point  of  honour,  which  he 
laid  before  the  judgment  of  Mr.  Darwin,  more  especially  as 
the  latter  had  been  primarily  concerned  in  the  case. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Oct,  i6,  1873. 

My  dear  Rolleston — A  note  which  came  from  Mrs.  Rolles- 
ton to  my  wife  the  other  day,  kindly  answering  some  inquiries 
of  ours  about  the  Oxford  Middle  Class  Examination,  gave  us 
but  a  poor  account  of  your  health. 

This  kind  of  thing  wont  do,  you  know.     Here  is  ill, 

and  I  doing  all  I  can  to  persuade  him  to  go  away  and  take  care 
of  himself,  and  now  comes  ill  news  of  you. 

Is  it  dyspeps  again  ?  If  so  follow  in  my  steps.  I  mean  to  go 
about  the  country,  with  somebody  who  can  lecture,  as  the 
"horrid  example" — cured.  Nothing  but  gross  and  disgusting 
intemperance,  Sir,  was  the  cause  of  all  my  evil.  And  now  that 
I  have  been  a  teetotaller  for  nine  months,  and  have  cut  down 
my  food  supply  to  about  half  of  what  I  used  to  eat,  the  enemy 
is  beaten. 

I  have  carried  my  own  permissive  bill,  and  no  canteen  (ex- 
cept for  my  friends  who  still  sit  in  darkness)  is  allowed  on  the 
premises.  And  as  this  is  the  third  letter  I  have  written  before 
breakfast  (a  thing  I  never  could  achieve  in  the  days  when  I 
wallowed  in  the  stye  of  Epicurus),  you  perceive  that  I  am  as 
vigorous  as  ever  I  was  in  my  life. 

Let  me  have  news  of  you,  and  believe  me — Ever  yours  very 
faithfully,  T.  H.  H. 

Athen;€um  Club,  Nov,  3,  1873. 
My  dear  Darwin — You  will  have  heard  (in  fact  I  think  I 
mentioned  the  matter  when  I  paid  you  my  pleasant  visit  the 

other  day)  that is  ill  and  obliged  to  go  away  for  six  months 

to  a  warm  climate.  It  is  a  great  grief  to  me,  as  he  is  a  man 
for  whom  I  have  great  esteem  and  affection,  apart  from  his 


1873  IMPROVEMENT   IN    HEALTH  435 

high  scientific  merits,  and  his  symptoms  are  such  as  cause  very 
grave  anxjety.  I  shall  be  happily  disappointed  if  that  accursed 
consumption  has  not  got  hold  of  him. 

The  college  authorities  have  behaved  as  well  as  they  possibly 
could  to  him,  and  I  do  not  suppose  that  his  enforced  retirement 
for  a  while  gives  him  the  least  pecuniary  anxiety  as  his  people 
are  all  well  off,  and  he  himself  has  an  income  apart  from  his 
college  pay.  Nevertheless,  under  such  circumstances,  a  man 
with  half  a  dozen  children  always  wants  all  the  money  he  can 
lay  hands  on;  and  whether  he  does  or  no,  he  ought  not  to  be 
allowed  to  deprive  himself  of  any,  which  leads  me  to  the  gist  of 
my  letter.  His  name  was  on  your  list  as  one  of  those  hearty 
friends  who  came  to  my  rescue  last  year,  and  it  was  the  only 
name  which  made  me  a  little  uneasy,  for  I  doubted  whether  it 
was  right  for  a  man  with  his  responsibilities  to  make  sacrifices 
of  this  sort.  However,  I  stifled  that  feeling,  not  seeing  what 
else  I  could  do  without  wounding  him.  But  now  my  conscience 
won't  let  me  be,  and  I  do  not  think  that  any  consideration  ought 
to  deter  me  from  getting  his  contribution  back  to  him  somehow 
or  other.  There  is  no  one  to  whose  judgment  on  a  point  of 
honour  I  would  defer  more  readily  than  yours,  and  I  am  quite 
sure  you  will  agree  with  me.  1  really  am  quite  unhappy  and 
ashamed  to  think  of  myself  as  vigorous  and  well  at  the  expense 
of  his  denying  himself  any  rich  man's  caprice  he  might  take  a 
fancy  to. 

So,  my  dear,  good  friend,  let  me  know  what  his  contribution 
was,  that  I  may  get  it  back  to  him  somehow  or  other,  even  if  I 
go  like  Nicodemus  privily  and  by  night  to  his  bankers. — Ever 
yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  H. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 
1874 

My  father's  health  continued  fairly  good  in  1874,  and 
while  careful  to  avoid  excessive  strain  he  was  able  to  under- 
take nearly  as  much  as  before  his  illness  outside  his  regular 
work  at  South  Kensington,  the  Royal  Society,  and  on  the 
Royal  Commission.  To  this  year  belong  three  important 
essays,  educational  and  philosophical.  From  February  25 
to  March  3  he  was  at  Aberdeen,  staying  first  with  Professor 
Bain,  afterwards  with  Mr.  Webster,  in  fulfilment  of  his  first 
duty  as  Lord  Rector  *  to  deliver  an  address  to  the  students. 
Taking  as  his  subject  "  Universities,  Actual  and  Ideal,"  he 
then  proceeded  to  vindicate,  historically  and  philosophically, 
the  claims  of  natural  science  to  take  the  place  from  which 
it  had  so  long  been  ousted  in  the  universal  culture  which 
a  University  professes  to  give.  More  especially  he  de- 
manded an  improved  system  of  education  in  the  medical 
school,  a  point  to  which  he  gave  practical  effect  in  the 
Council  of  the  University. 

In  an  ideal  University,  as  I  conceive  it,  a  man  should  be  able 
to  obtain  instruction  in  all  forms  of  knowledge,  and  discipline  in 
the  use  of  all  the  methods  by  which  knowledge  is  obtained.  In 
such  a  University  the  force  of  living  example  should  fire  the 
student  with  a  noble  ambition  to  emulate  the  learning  of  learned 
men,  and  to  follow  in  the  footsteps  of  the  explorers  of  new  fields 
of  knowledge.    And  the  very  air  he  breathes  should  be  charged 

*  It  may  be  noted  that  between  i860  and  1890  he  and  Professor 
Bain  were  the  only  Lord  Rectors  of  Aberdeen  University  elected  on 
non-political  grounds. 
436 


n 


Portrait  from  a  Photograph  by  Elliott  and  Fry; 
Steel  Engraving  in  Nature,  February  5,  1874. 


'  ■•-«if,.^7'-.-.^.^ 


1874  LORD   RECTOR   OF   ABERDEEN  437 

with  that  enthusiasm  for  truth,  that  fanaticism  of  veracity, 
which  is  a  greater  possession  than  much  learning;  a  nobler  gift 
than  the  power  of  increasing  knowledge;  by  so  much  greater 
and  nobler  than  these,  as  the  moral  nature  of  man  is  greater 
than  the  intellectual;  for  veracity  is  the  heart  of  morality. 
(Coll.  Ess.  iii,  189,  sqq.) 

As  for  the  "  so-called  *  conflict  of  studies,' "  he  ex- 
claims— 

One  might  as  well  inquire  which  of  the  terms  of  a  Rule  of 
Three  sum  one  ought  to  know  in  order  to  get  a  trustworthy 
result.  Practical  life  is  such  a  sum,  in  which  your  duty  multi- 
plied into  your  capacity  and  divided  by  your  circumstances  gives 
you  the  fourth  term  in  the  proportion,  which  is  your  deserts, 
with  great  accuracy. 

The  knowledge  on  which  medical  practice  should  be 
based  is  "  the  sort  of  practical,  familiar,  finger-end  know- 
ledge which  a  watchmaker  has  of  a  watch,"  the  knowledge 
gained  in  the  dissecting-room  and  laboratory, 

Until  each  of  the  greater  truths  of  anatomy  and  physiology 
has  become  an  organic  part  of  your  minds — until  you  would 
know  them  if  you  were  roused  and  questioned  in  the  middle  of 
the  night,  as  a  man  knows  the  geography  of  his  native  place  and 
the  daily  life  of  his  home.  That  is  the  sort  of  knowledge  which, 
once  obtained,  is  a  life-long  possession.  Other  occupations  may 
fill  your  minds — it  may  grow  dim  and  seem  to  be  forgotten — 
but  there  it  is,  like  the  inscription  on  a  battered  and  defaced 
coin,  which  comes  out  when  you  warm  it. 

Hence  the  necessity  to  concentrate  the  attention  on 
these  cardinal  truths,  and  to  discard  a  number  of  extraneous 
subjects  commonly  supposed  to  be  requisite  whether  for 
general  culture  of  the  medical  student  or  to  enable  him  to 
correct  the  possible  mistakes  of  druggists.  Against  this 
"  Latin  fetish  "  in  medical  education,  as  he  used  to  call  it, 
he  carried  on  a  lifelong  campaign,  as  may  be  gathered  from 
his  published  essays  on  medical  education,  and  from  letters 
given  in  later  chapters  of  this  book.  But  there  is  another 
side  to  such  limitation  in  professional  training.  Though 
literature  is  an  essential  in  the  preliminary,  general  educa- 
tion, culture  is  not  solely  dependent  upon  classics. 


438  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxviii 

Moreover,  I  would  urge  that  a  thorough  study  of  Human 
Physiology  is  in  itself  an  education  broader  and  more  compre- 
hensive than  much  that  passes  under  that  name.  There  is  no 
side  of  the  intellect  which  it  does  not  call  into  play,  no  region 
of  human  knowledge  into  which  either  its  roots  or  its  branches 
do  not  extend;  like  the  Atlantic  between  the  Old  and  the  New 
Worlds,  its  waves  wash  the  shores  of  the  two  worlds  of  matter 
and  of  mind;  its  tributary  streams  flow  from  both;  through  its 
waters,  as  yet  unfurrowed  by  the  keel  of  any  Columbus,  lies  the 
road,  if  such  there  be,  from  the  one  to  the  other;  far  away 
from  that  North-west  Passage  of  mere  speculation,  in  which 
so  many  brave  souls  have  been  hopelessly  frozen  up. 

Of  the  address  he  writes  to  his  wife,  February  27 : — 

I  have  just  come  back  from  the  hall  in  which  the  address 
was  delivered,  somewhat  tired.  The  hall  was  very  large,  and 
contained,  I  stkppose,  a  couple  of  thousand  people,  and  the 
students  made  a  terrific  row  at  intervals,  though  they  were  quiet 
enough  at  times.  As  the  address  took  me  an  hour  and  a  half 
to  deliver,  and  my  voice  has  been  very  shaky  ever  since  I  have 
been  here,  I  did  not  dare  to  put  too  much  strain  upon  it,  and 
I  suspect  that  the  people  at  the  end  of  the  hall  could  have  heard 
very  little.  However,  on  the  whole,  it  went  off  better  than  I 
expected. 

And  to  Professor  Baynes : — 

I  am  very  glad  you  liked  my  address.  The  students  were 
abnormally  quiet  for  the  first  half  hour,  and  then  made  up  for 
their  reticence  by  a  regular  charivari  for  the  rest  of  the  time. 
However,  I  was  consoled  by  hearing  that  they  were  much 
quieter  than  usual. 

Dr.  John  Muir's  appreciation  is  worth  having.  It  did  not 
occur  to  me  that  what  I  had  to  say  would  interest  people  out  of 
Britain,  but  to  my  surprise  I  had  an  application  from  a  German 
for  permission  to  translate  the  address  the  other  day. 

Again  to  his  wife,  March  i : — 

...  I  was  considerably  tired  after  my  screed  on  Friday,  but 
Bain  and  I  took  a  long  walk,  and  I  was  fresh  again  by  dinner- 
time. I  dined  with  the  Senators  at  a  hotel  in  the  town,  and  of 
course  had  to  make  a  speech  or  two.  However  I  cut  all  that  as 
fast  as  I  could.  They  were  all  very  apologetic  for  the  row  the 
students  made.    After  the  dinner  one  of  the  Professors  came 


1874  ADDRESS  ON    «* JOSEPH   PRIESTLEY"  439 

to  ask  me  if  I  would  have  any  objection  to  attend  service  in 
the  College  Chapel  on  Sunday  as  the  students  would  like  it. 
I  said  I  was  quite  ready  to  do  anything  it  was  customary  for  the 
Rector  to  do,  and  so  this  morning  in  half  an  hour's  time  I  shall 
be  enduring  the  pains  and  penalties  of  a  Presbyterian  service. 

There  was  to  have  been  another  meeting  of  the  University 
Court  yesterday,  but  the  Principal  was  suffering  so  much  from 
an  affection  of  the  lungs  that  I  adjourned  the  meeting  till  to- 
morrow. Did  I  tell  you  that  I  carried  all  my  resolutions  about 
improving  the  medical  curriculum  ?  Fact,  though  greatly  to  my 
astonishment  To-morrow  we  go  in  for  some  reforms  in  the 
arts  curriculum,  and  I  expect  that  the  job  will  be  tougher. 

I  send  you  a  couple  of  papers — Scotsman,  with  a  very  good 
leading  article,  and  the  Aberdeen  Herald  also  with  a  leading 
article,  which  is  as  much  favourable  as  was  to  be  expected.  .  .  . 
The  Websters  are  making  me  promise  to  bring  you  and  one  of 
the  children  here  next  autumn.  They  are  wonderfully  kind 
people. 

March  2. — My  work  here  finishes  to-day.  There  is  a  meet- 
ing of  the  Council  at  one  o'clock,  and  before  that  I  am  to  go 
and  look  over  laboratories  and  collections  with  sundry  Pro- 
fessors. Then  there  is  the  supper  at  half-past  eight  and  the 
inevitable  speeches,  for  which  I  am  not  in  the  least  inclined  at 
present.  I  went  officially  to  the  College  Chapel  yesterday,  and 
went  through  a  Presbyterian  service  for  the  first  time  in  my 
life.    May  it  be  the  last ! 

Then  to  lunch  at  Professor  Struthers*  and  back  here  for  a 
small  dinner  party.  I  am  standing  it  all  well,  for  the  weather 
is  villanous  and  there  is  no  getting  any  exercise.  I  shall  leave 
here  by  the  twelve  o'clock  train  to-morrow. 

On  August  2  he  delivered  an  address  on  "Joseph 
Priestley  "  {Coll.  Ess.  in.  i),  at  Birmingham,  on  the  occasion 
of  the  presentation  of  a  statue  of  Priestley  to  that  town. 
The  biography  of  this  pioneer  of  science  and  of  political 
reform,  who  was  persecuted  for  opinions  that  have  in  less 
than  a  century  become  commonplaces  of  orthodox  thought, 
suggested  a  comparison  between  those  times  and  this,  and 
evoked  a  sincere  if  not  very  enthusiastic  tribute  to  one  who 
had  laboured  to  better  the  world,  not  for  the  sake  of  worldly 
honour,  but  for  the  sake  of  truth  and  right. 

As  the  way  to  Birmingham  lay  through  Oxford,  he  was 
29 


440 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY         chap,  xxviii 


asked  by  Professor  Ray  Lankester,  then  a  Fellow  of  Uni- 
versity College,  if  he  could  not  break  his  journey  there, 
and  inspect  the  results  of  his  investigations  on  Lymnaeus. 
The  answer  was  as  follows : — 

We  go  to  Birmingham  on  Friday  by  the  three  o'clock  train, 
but  there  is  no  chance  of  stopping  at  Oxford  either  going  or 
coming,  so  that  unless  you  bring  a  Lymnaeus  or  two  (under 
guise  of  periwinkles  for  refreshment)  to  the  carriage  door  I 
shall  not  be  able  to  see  them. 

The  following  letters  refer  both  to  this  address  on 
Priestley,  and  to  the  third  of  the  important  addresses  of  this 
year,  that  "  On  the  Hypothesis  that  Animals  are  Automata, 
and  its  History  "  (Coll.  Ess,  i.  199,  see  also  p.  442  below). 
The  latter  was  delivered  at  Belfast  before  the  British  Asso- 
ciation under  Tyndall's  presidency.  It  appears  that  only 
a  month  before,  he  had  not  so  much  as  decided  upon  his 
subject — indeed,  was  thinking  of  something  quite  different. 

The  first  allusion  in  these  letters  is  to  a  concluding 
phase  of  Tyndall's  controversy  upon  the  claims  of  the  late 
Principal  Forbes  in  the  matter  of  Glacier  theory : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  London,  N.W., 
/unr  24,  1874. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  quite  agree  with  your  Scotch  friend 
in  his  estimate  of  Forbes,  and  if  he  were  alive  and  the  con- 
troversy beginning  I  should  say  draw  your  picture  in  your  best 
sepia  or  lamp  black.  But  I  have  been  thinking  over  this  matter 
a  good  deal  since  I  received  your  letter,  and  my  verdict  is,  leave 
that  tempting  piece  of  portraiture  alone. 

The  world  is  neither  wise  nor  just,  but  it  makes  up  for  all 
its  folly  and  injustice  by  being  damnably  sentimental,  and  the 
more  severely  true  your  portrait  might  be  the  more  loud  would 
be  the  outcry  against  it.  I  should  say  publish  a  new  edition  of 
your  Glaciers  of  the  Alps,  make  a  clear  historical  statement  of 
all  the  facts  showing  Forbes's  relations  to  Rendu  and  Agassiz, 
and  leave  the  matter  to  the  judgment  of  your  contemporaries. 
That  will  sink  in  and  remain  when  all  the  hurly-burly  is  over. 

I  wonder  if  that  address  is  begun,  and  if  you  are  going  to 
be  as  wise  and  prudent  as  I  was  at  Liverpool.  When  I  think  of 
the  temptation  I  resisted  on  that  occasion,  like  Clive  when  he  was 
charged  with  peculation,  "  I  marvel  at  my  own  forbearance ! " 


i874  LETTERS  TO   TYNDALL  441 

Let  my  example  be  a  burning  and  a  shining  light  to  you.     I 
declare  I  have  horrid  misgivings  of  your  kicking  over  the  traces. 

The  "  X  "  comes  oli  on  Saturday  next,  so  let  your  ears  bum, 
for  we  shall  be  talking  about  you.  I  have  just  begun  my  lectures 
to  Schoolmasters,  and  I  wish  they  were  over,  though  I  am  very 
well  on  the  whole. 

Griffith  wrote  to  ask  for  the  title  of  my  lecture  at  Belfast, 
and  I  had  to  tell  him  I  did  not  know  yet.  I  shall  not  begin  to 
think  of  it  till  the  middle  of  July  when  these  lectures  are  over. 

The  wife  would  send  her  love,  but  she  has  gone  to  Kew  to 
one  of  Hooker's  receptions,  taking  Miss  Jewsbury,*  who  is  stay- 
ing with  us.  I  was  to  have  gone  to  the  College  of  Physicians' 
dinner  to-night,  but  I  was  so  weary  when  I  got  home  that  I 
made  up  my  mind  to  send  an  excuse.  And  then  came  the 
thought  that  I  had  not  written  to  you. — Ever  yours  sincerely, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  following  is  in  reply  to  Tyndall,  who  had  written 
from  Switzerland  on  July  15 : — 

I  confess  to  you  that- 1  am  far  more  anxious  about  your 
condition  than  about  my  own ;  for  I  fear  that  after  your  London 
labour  the  labour  of  this  lecture  will  press  heavily  upon  you. 
I  wish  to  Heaven  it  could  be  transferred  to  other  shoulders. 

I  wish  I  could  get  rid  of  the  uncomfortable  idea  that  I  have 
drawn  upon  you  at  a  time  when  your  friend  and  brother  ought 
to  be  anxious  to  spare  you  every  labour.  .  -  . 

PS. — Have  just  seen  the  Swiss  Times;  am  intensely  dis- 
gusted to  find  that  while  I  was  brooding  over  the  calamities  pos- 
sibly consequent  on  your  lending  me  a  hand,  that  you  have  been 
at  the  Derby  Statue,  and  are  to  make  an  oration  apropos  of  the 
Priestley  Statue  in  Birmingham  on  the  ist  August ! !  I 

4  Maklborouch  Place,  London,  N.W.. 
July  22,  1874. 
My  dear  Tyndall — I  hope  you  have  been  taking  more  care 
of  your  instep  than  you  did  of  your  leg  in  old  times.    Don't  try 
mortifying  the  flesh  again. 

I  was  uncommonly  amused  at  your  disgustful  wind  up  after 
writing  me  such  a  compassionate  letter.  I  am  as  jolly  as  a 
sandboy  so  long  as  I  live  on  a  minimum  and  drink  no  alcohol, 

*  Miss  Geraldine  Jewsbury  (1812-80)  the  novelist,  and  friend  of  the 
Carlyles.     After  1866  she  lived  at  Sevenoaks. 


442 


LIFE   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxviil 


and  as  vigorous  as  ever  I  was  in  my  life.  But  a  late  dinner 
wakes  up  my  demoniac  colon  and  gives  me  a  fit  of  blue  devils 
with  physical  precision. 

Don't  believe  that  I  am  at  all  the  places  in  which  the  new^s- 
papers  put  me.  For  example,  I  was  not  at  the  Lord  Mayor's 
dinner  last  night.  As  for  Lord  Derby's  statue,  I  wanted  to  get 
a  lesson  in  the  art  of  statue  unveiling.  I  help  to  pay  Dizzie's 
salary,  so  I  don't  see  why  I  should  not  get  a  wrinkle  from  that 
artful  dodger. 

I  plead  guilty  to  having  accepted  the  Birmingham  invita- 
tion.* I  thought  they  deserved  to  be  encouraged  for  having 
asked  a  man  of  science  to  do  the  job  instead  of  some  noble  swell ; 
and,  moreover,  Satan  whispered  that  it  would  be  a  good  oppor- 
tunity for  a  little  ventilation  of  wickedness.  I  cannot  say,  how- 
ever, that  I  can  work  myself  up  into  much  enthusiasm  for  the 
dry  old  Unitarian  who  did  not  go  very  deep  into  anything.  But 
I  think  I  may  make  him  a  good  peg  whereon  to  hang  a  discourse 
on  the  tendencies  of  modem  thought 

I  was  not  at  the  Cambridge  pow-wow — ^not  out  of  prudence, 
but  because  I  was  not  asked.  I  suppose  that  decent  respect 
towards  a  secretarj'  of  the  Royal  Society  was  not  strong  enough 
to  outweigh  University  objections  to  the  incumbent  of  that 
office.  It  is  well  for  me  that  I  e^cpect  nothing  from  Oxford 
or  Cambridge,  having  burned  my  ships  so  far  as  they  were  con- 
cerned long  ago. 

I  sent  your  note  on  to  Knowles  as  soon  as  it  arrived,  but  I 
have  heard  nothing  from  him.  I  wrote  to  him  again  to-night 
to  say  that  he  had  better  let  me  see  it  in  proof  if  he  is  going  to 
print  it.  I  am  right  glad  you  find  anything  worth  reading  again 
in  my  old  papers.  I  stand  by  the  view  I  took  of  the  origin  of 
species  now  as  much  as  ever. 

Shall  I  not  see  the  address?  It  is  tantalising  to  hear  of  your 
progress,  and  not  to  know  what  is  in  it. 

I  am  thinking  of  taking  Development  for  the  subject  of  my 
evening  lecture,f  the  concrete  facts  made  out  in  the  last  thirty 
years  without  reference  to  Evolution.  If  people  see  that  it  is 
Evolution,  that  is  Nature's  fault,  and  not  mine. 

We  are  all  flourishing,  and  send  our  love. — Ever  yours  faitfi- 
fully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

*  To  deliver  the  address  at  the  opening  of  the  Mason  College.  It 
was  on  Joseph  Priestley. 

f  i.f.  At  the  British  Association,  he  actually  took  "  Animals  as 
Automata." 


1874  ANIMAL  AUTOMATISM  443 

The  paper  on  Animal  Automatism  is  in  effect  an  en- 
largement of  a  short  paper  read  before  the  Metaphysical 
Society  in  1871,  under  the  title  of  "  Has  a  Frog  a  Soul?" 
It  begins  with  a  vindication  of  Descartes  as  a  great  physi- 
ologist, doing  for  the  physiology  of  motion  and  sensation 
that  which  Harvey  had  done  for  the  circulation  of  the  blood. 
A  series  of  propositions  which  constitute  the  foundation  and 
essence  of  the  modern  physiology  of  the  nervous  system,  are 
fully  expressed  and  illustrated  in  the  writings  of  Descartes. 
Modem  physiological  research,  which  has  shown  that  many 
apparently  purposive  acts  are  performed  by  animals,  and 
even  by  men,  deprived  of  con;sciousness,  and  therefore  of 
volition,  is  at  least  compatible  with  the  theory  of  automatism 
in  animals,  although  the  doctrine  of  continuity  forbids  the 
belief  that  "  such  complex  phenomena  as  those  of  conscious- 
ness first  make  their  appearance  in  man."  And  if  the  voli- 
tions of  animals  do  not  enter  into  the  chain  of  causation 
of  their  actions  at  all,  the  fact  lays  at  rest  the  question, 
"  How  is  it  possible  to  imagine  that  volition,  which  is  a 
state  of  consciousness,  and,  as  such,  has  not  the  slightest 
community  of  nature  with  matter*in  motion,  can  act  upon 
the  moving  matter  of  which  the  body  is  composed,  as  it  is 
assumed  to  do  in  voluntary  acts  ?  " 

As  for  man,  the  argumentation,  if  sound,  holds  equally 
good.  States  of  consciousness  are  immediately  caused  by 
molecular  changes  of  the  brain-substance,  and  our  mental 
conditions  are  simply  the  symbols  in  consciousness  of  the 
changes  which  take  place  automatically  in  the  organism. 

As  for  the  bugbear  of  the  "  logical  consequences  "  of  this 
conviction,  "  I  may  be  permitted  to  remark  (he  says),  that 
logical  consequences  are  the  scarecrows  of  fools  and  the 
beacons  of  wise  men."  And  if  St.  Augustine,  Calvin,  and 
Jonathan  Edwards  have  held  in  substance  the  view  that 
men  are  conscious  automata,  to  hold  this  view  does  not 
constitute  a  man  a  fatalist,  a  materialist,  nor  an  atheist. 
And  he  takes  occasion  once  more  to  declare  that  he  ranks 
among  none  of  these  philosophers. 

Not  among  fatalists,  for  I  take  the  conception  of  necessity  to 
have  a  logical,  and  not  a  physical  foundation;  not  among  ma- 


444 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxvxh 


terialists,  for  I  am  utterly  incapable  of  conceiving  the  existence 
of  matter  if  there  is  no  mind  in  which  to  picture  that  existence ; 
not  among  atheists,  for  the  problem  of  the  ultimate  cause  of 
existence  is  one  which  seems  to  me  to  be  hopelessly  out  of  reach 
of  my  poor  powers.  Of  all  the  senseless  babble  I  have  ever  had 
occasion  to  read,  the  demonstrations  of  these  philosophers  who 
undertake  to  tell  us  all  about  the  nature  of  God  would  be  the 
worst,  if  they  were  not  surpassed  by  the  still  greater  absurdities 
of  the  philosophers  who  try  to  prove  that  there  is  no  God. 

This  essay  was  delivered  as  an  evening  address  on 
August  24,  the  Monday  of  the  Association  week.  A  vast 
stir  had  been  created  by  the  treatment  of  deep  reaching 
problems  in  Professor  Tyndall's  presidential  address;  in- 
terest was  still  further  excited  by  this  unexpected  excursion 
into  metaphysics.  "  I  remember,"  writes  Sir  M.  Foster, 
"  having  a  talk  with  him  about  the  lecture  before  he  gave 
it.  I  think  I  went  to  his  lodgings — ^and  he  sketched  out 
what  he  was  going  to  say.  The  question  was  whether,  in 
view  of  the  Tyndall  row,  it  was  wise  in  him  to  take  the  line 
he  had  marked  out.  In  the  end  I  remember  his  saying, 
*  Grasp  your  nettle,  that'  is  what  I  have  got  to  do.' "  But 
apart  from  the  subject,  the  manner  of  the  address  struck 
the  audience  as  a  wonderful  tour  de  force.  The  man  who 
at  first  disliked  public  speaking,  and  always  expected  to 
break  down  on  the  platform,  now,  without  note  or  refer- 
ence of  any  kind,  discoursed  for  an  hour  and  a  half  upon 
a  complex  and  difficult  subject,  in  the  very  words  which 
he  had  thought  out  and  afterwards  published. 

This  would  have  been  a  remarkable  achievement  if  he 
had  planned  to  do  so  and  had  learned  up  his  speech;  but  . 
the  fact  was  that  he  was  compelled  to  speak  off-hand  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment.    He  describes  the  situation  in  a  letter 
of  February  6,  1894,  to  Professor  Ray  Lankester : — 

I  knew  that  I  was  treading  on  very  dangerous  ground,  so  I 
wrote  out  uncommonly  full  and  careful  notes,  and  had  them  in 
my  hand  when  I  stepped  on  to  the  platform. 

Then,  I  suddenly  became  aware  of  the  bigness  of  the  audi- 
ence, and  the  conviction  came  upon  me  that,  if  I  looked  at  my 
notes,  not  one  half  would  hear  me.    It  was  a  bad  ten  seconds. 


i874  A   DIFFICULT   SPEECH  445 

but  I  made  my  election  and  turned  the  notes  face  downwards 
on  the  desk. 

To  this  day,  I  do  not  exactly  know  how  the  thing  managed 
to  roll  itself  out;  but  it  did,  as  you  say,  for  the  best  part  of  an 
hour  and  a  half. 

There's  a  story  pour  voiis  encourager  if  you  are  ever  in  a 
like  fix. 

He  writes  home  on  August  20: — 

Johnny's  address  went  off  exceedingly  well  last  night. 
There  was  a  mighty  gathering  in  the  Ulster  Hall,  and  he  deliv- 
ered his  speech  very  well.  The  meeting  promises  to  be  a  good 
one,  as  there  are  over  1800  members  already,  and  I  daresay  they 
will  mount  up  to  2000  before  the  end.  The  Hookers'  arrange- 
ments *  all  went  to  smash  as  I  rather  expected  they  would,  but 
I  have  a  very  good  clean  lodging  well  outside  the  town  where 
I  can  be  quiet  if  I  like,  and  on  the  whole  I  think  that  is  better, 
as  I  shall  be  able  to  work  up  my  lectures  in  peace.  .  .  . 

August  21. — Everything  is  going  on  very  well  here.  The 
weather  is  delightful,  and  under  these  circumstances  my  lodg- 
ings here  with  John  Ball  for  a  companion  turns  out  to  be  a 
most  excellent  arrangement.  I  need  not  say  that  I  was  speaking 
more  or  less  all  day  long,  fa  va  sans  dire,  though,  by  the  way, 
that  is  a  bull  induced  by  the  locality.  I  am  not  going  on  any 
of  the  excursions  on  Sunday.  I  am  going  to  have  a  quiet  day 
here  when  everybody  will  suppose  that  I  have  accepted  every- 
body else's  invitation  to  be  somewhere  else.  The  Ulster  Hall, 
in  which  the  addresses  are  delivered,  seems  to  me  to  be  a  terrible 
room  to  speak  in,  and  I  mean  to  nurse  my  energies  all  Monday. 
I  sent  you  a  cutting  from  one  of  the  papers  containing  an  ac- 
count of  me  that  will  amuse  you.  The  writer  is  evidently  dis- 
appointed that  I  am  not  a  turbulent  savage. 

August  25 : — 

...  My  work  is  over  and  I  start  for  Kingstown,  where  I 
mean  to  sleep  to-night,  in  an  hour.  I  have  just  sent  you  a  full 
and  excellent  report  of  my  lecture.f  I  am  glad  to  say  it  was  a 
complete  success.  I  never  was  in  better  voice  in  my  life,  and  I 
spoke  for  an  hour  and  a  half  without  notes,  the  people  listening 

♦  i.f.  for  the  members  of  the  jr-club  and  their  wives  to  club  together 
at  Belfast. 

t  **  On  Animals  as  Automata"  ;  see  above. 


446  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxviii 

as  still  as  mice.  There  has  been  a  great  row  about  Tyndall's 
address,  and  I  had  some  reason  to  expect  that  I  should  have 
to  meet  a  frantically  warlike  audience.  But  it  was  quite  other- 
wise, and  though  I  spoke  my  mind  with  very  great  plainness 
I  never  had  a  warmer  reception.  And  I  am  not  without  hope 
that  I  have  done  something  to  allay  the  storm,  though,  as  you 
may  be  sure,  I  did  not  sacrifice  plain  speaking  to  that  end.  ...  I 
have  been  most  creditably  quiet  here,  and  have  gone  to  no  din- 
ners or  breakfasts  or  other  such  fandangoes  except  those  I  ac- 
cepted before  leaving  home.  Sunday  I  spent  quietly  here,  think- 
ing over  my  lecture  and  putting  my  peroration,  which  required 
a  good  deal  of  care,  into  shape.  I  wandered  out  into  the  fields 
in  the  afternoon,  and  sat  a  long  time  thinking  of  all  that  had 
happened  since  I  was  here  a  young  beginner,  two  and  twenty, 
and  .  .  .  you  were  largely  in  my  thoughts,  which  were  full  of 
blessings  and  tender  memories. 

I  had  a  good  night's  work  last  night.  I  dined  with  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  College,  then  gave  my  lecture.  After  that  I  smoked 
a  bit  with  Foster  till  eleven  o'clock,  and  then  I  went  to  the 
Northern  Whig  office  to  see  that  the  report  of  my  lecture  was 
all  right.  It  is  the  best  paper  here,  and  the  Editor  had  begged 
me  to  see  to  the  report,  and  I  was  anxious  myself  that  I  should 
be  rightly  represented.  So  I  sat  there  till  a  quarter  past  one 
having  the  report  read  and  correcting  it  when  necessary.  Then 
I  came  home  and  got  to  bed  about  two.  I  have  just  been  to  the 
section  and  read  my  paper  there  to  a  large  audience  who  cannot 
have  understood  ten  words  of  it,  but  who  looked  highly  edified, 
and  now  I  have  done.  Our  lodging  has  turned  out  admirably, 
and  Ball's  company  has  been  very  pleasant.  So  that  the  fiasco 
of  our  arrangements  was  all  for  the  best. 

I  take  the  account  of  this  last  mentioned  paper  in  Sec- 
tion D  from  the  report  in  Nature: — 

Professor  Huxley  opened  the  last  day  of  the  session  with  an 
account  of  his  recent  observations  on  the  development  of  the 
Columella  auris  in  Amphibia.  (He  described  it  as  an  outgrowth 
of  the  periotic  capsule,  and  therefore  unconnected  with  any 
visceral  arch).  .  .  . 

In  the  absence  of  Mr.  Parker  there  was  no  one  competent 
to  criticise  the  paper  from  personal  knowledge;  but  a  word 
dropped  as  to  the  many  changes  in  the  accepted  homologies  of 
the  ossicula  auditus,  elicited  a  masterly  and  characteristic  ex- 
position of  the  series  of  new  facts,  and  the  modifications  of  the 


i874  LETTER   TO   PARKER  ^y 

theory  they  have  led  to,  from  Reichert's  first  observations  down 
to  the  present  time.  The  embryonic  structures  grew  and  shaped 
themselves  on  the  board,  and  shifted  their  relations  in  accord- 
ance with  the  views  of  successive  observers,  until  a  graphic 
epitome  of  the  progress  of  knowledge  on  the  subject  was  com- 
pleted. 

He  and  Parker  indeed  (to  whom  he  signs  himself, 
"  Ever  yours  amphibially ")  had  been  busy,  not  only 
throughout  1874,  but  for  several  years  earlier,  examining 
the  development  of  the  Amphibia,  with  a  particular  view  to 
the  whole  theory  of  the  vertebrate  skull,  for  which  he  had 
done  similar  work  in  1857  and  1858.  Thus  in  May  4,  1870, 
he  writes  to  Parker : — 

I  read  all  the  most  important  part  of  your  Frog-paper  last 
night,  and  a  grand  piece  of  work  it  is — more  important,  I  think, 
in  all  its  bearings  than  anything  you  have  done  yet. 

From  which  premisses  I  am  going  to  draw  a  conclusion 
which  you  do  not  expect,  namely,  that  the  paper  must  by  no 
manner  of  means  go  into  the  Royal  Society  in  its  present  shape. 
And  for  the  reasons  following: — 

In  the  first  place,  the  style  is  ultra-Parkerian.  From  a 
literary  point  of  view,  my  dear  friend,  you  remind  me  of  nothing 
so  much  as  a  dog  going  home.  He  has  a  goal  before  him  which 
he  will  certainly  reach  sooner  or  later,  but  first  he  is  on  this 
side  the  road,  and  now  on  that;  anon,  he  stops  to  scratch  at  an 
ancient  rat-hole,  or  maybe  he  catches  sight  of  another  dog,  a 
quarter  of  a  mile  behind,  and  bolts  off  to  have  a  friendly,  or 
inimical  sniff.    In  fact,  his  course  is  .  .  .  (here  a  tangled  maze 

is  drawn)  not ,    In  the  second  place,  you  must  begin  with 

an  earlier  stage.  .  .  .  That  is  the  logical  starting-point  of  the 
whole  affair. 

Will  you  come  and  dine  at  6  on  Saturday,  and  talk  over  the 
whole  business? 

If  you  have  drawings  of  earlier  stages  you  might  bring  them. 
I  suspect  that  what  is  wanted  might  be  supplied  in  plenty  of 
time  to  get  the  paper  in. 

In  1874  he  re-dissects  the  skull  of  Axolotl  to  clear  up 
the  question  as  to  the  existence  of  the  "  ventral  head  or 
pedicle  "  which  Parker  failed  to  observe :  "  If  you  disbelieve 
in  that  pedicle  again,  I  shall  be  guilty  of  an  act  of  personal 


448  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxviii 

violence."  Later,  "  I  am  benevolent  to  all  the  world,  being 
possessed  of  a  dozen  live  axolotls  and  four  or  five  big  dead 
mesobranchs.  Moreover,  I  am  going  to  get  endless  Frogs 
and  Toads  by  judicious  exchange  with  Gunther.  We  will 
work  up  the  Amphibia  as  they  have  not  been  done  since 
they  were  crea — I  mean  evolved."  * 

The  question  of  the  pedicle  comes  up  again  when  he 
simplifies  some  of  Parker's  results  as  to  the  development 
of  the  Columella  auris  in  the  Frog.  "  Your  suprahyoman- 
dibular  is  nothing  but  the  pedicle  of  the  suspensorium  over 
again.  It  has  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the  columella 
auris.  .  .  .  The  whole  thing  will  come  out  as  simply  as 
possible  without  any  of  your  coalescences  and  combothera- 
tions.    How  you  will  hate  me  and  the  pedicle." 

Tracing  the  development  of  the  columella  was  a  long 
business,  but  it  grew  clearer  as  young  frogs  of  various  ages 
were  examined.  "  Don't  be  aggravated  with  yourself,"  he 
writes  to  Parker  in  July,  "  it's  tough  work,  this  here  Frog." 
And  on  August  5 :  "  I  have  worked  over  Toad  and  I  have 
worked  over  Frog,  and  I  tell  an  obstinate  man  that  s.h.m. 
(suprahyomandibular)  is  a  figment — or  a  vessel,  whichever 
said  obstinate  man  pleases."  The  same  letter  contains  what 
he  calls  his  final  views  on  the  columella,  but  by  the  end  of 
the  year  he  has  gone  further,  and  writes : — 

Be  prepared  to  bust-up  with  all  the  envy  of  which  your 
malignant  nature  is  capable.  The  problem  of  the  vertebrate 
skull  is  solved.  Fourteen  segments  or  thereabouts  in  Am- 
phioxus;  all  but  one  (barring  possibilities  about  the  ear  capsule) 
aborted  in  higher  vertebrata.  Skull  and  brain  of  Amphioxus 
shut  up  like  an  opera-hat  in  higher  vertebrata.  So!  (Sketch 
in  illustration). 

PS. — I  am  sure  you  will  understand  the  whole  affair  from 
this.      Probably  published  it  already  in  Nature! 

A  letter  to  the  Times  of  July  8,  1874,  on  women's  edu- 
cation, was  evoked  by  the  following  circumstances.  Miss 
Jex  Blake's  difficulties  in  obtaining  a  medical  education 

*  Dr.  A.  C.  L.  G.  Gunther,  of  the  British  Museum,  where  he  was 
appointed  Keeper  of  the  Department  of  Zoology  in  1875. 


i874  LETTER   TO   THE   TIMES  449 

have  already  been  referred  to  (p.  415).  A  further  discour- 
agement was  her  rejection  at  the  Edinburgh  examination. 
Her  papers,  however,  were  referred  to  Huxley,  who  decided 
that  certain  answers  were  not  up  to  the  standard. 

As  Miss  Jex  Blake  may  possibly  think  that  my  decision  was 
influenced  by  prejudice  against  her  cause,  allow  me  to  add  that 
sach  prejudice  as  I  labour  under  lies  in  the  opposite  direction. 
Without  seeing  any  reason  to  believe  that  women  are,  on  the 
average,  so  strong  physically,  intellectually,  or  morally,  as  men, 
I  cannot  shut  my  eyes  to  the  fact  that  many  women  are  much 
better  endowed  in  all  these  respects  than  many  men,  and  I  am 
at  a  loss  to  understand  on  what  grounds  of  justice  or  public 
policy  a  career  which  is  open  to  the  weakest  and  most  foolish 
of  the  male  sex  should  be  forcibly  closed  to  women  of  vigour 
and  capacity. 

We  have  heard  a  great  deal  lately  about  the  physical  dis- 
abilities of  women.  Some  of  these  alleged  impediments,  no 
doubt,  are  really  inherent  in  their  organisation,  but  nine-tenths 
of  them  are  artificial — the  products  of  their  modes  of  life.  I 
believe  that  nothing  would  tend  so  effectually  to  get  rid  of  these 
creations  of  idleness,  weariness,  and  that  "  over  stimulation  of 
the  emotions  "  which,  in  plainer-spoken  days,  used  to  be  called 
wantonness,  than  a  fair  share  of  healthy  work,  directed  towards 
a  definite  object,  combined  with  an  equally  fair  share  of  healthy 
play,  during  the  years  of  adolescence;  and  those  who  are  best 
acquainted  with  the  sfcquirements  of  an  average  medical  prac- 
titioner will  find  it  hardest  to  believe  that  the  attempt  to  reach 
that  standard  is  like  to  prove  exhausting  to  an  ordinarily  in- 
telligent and  well-educated  young  woman. 

The  Marine  Biological  Station  at  Naples  was  still  strug- 
gling for  existence,  and  to  my  father's  interest  in  it  is  due 
the  following  letter,  one  of  several  to  Dr.  Dohm,  whose 
marriage  took  place  this  summer: — 

4  Marlborough  Place, /i/«^  24,  1874. 
My  dear  Dohrn — Are  you  married  yet  or  are  you  not?  It 
is  very  awkward  to  congratulate  a  man  upon  what  may  not  have 
happened  to  him,  but  I  shall  assume  that  you  are  a  benedict,  and 
send  my  own  and  my  wife's  and  all  the  happy  family's  good 
wishes  accordingly.  May  you  have  as  good  a  wife  and  as  much 
a  "happy  family"  as  I  have,  though  I  would  advise  you — the 


450  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxviii 

hardness  of  the  times  being  considered — to  be  satisfied    -with 
fewer  than  seven  members  thereof. 

I  hear  excellent  accounts  of  the  progress  of  the  Station  from 
Lankester,  and  I  hope  that  it  is  now  set  on  its  legs  permanently. 
As  for  the  English  contribution,  you  must  look  upon  it  simply  as 
the  expression  of  the  hearty  goodwill  of  your  many  friends  in 
the  land  of  fogs,  and  of  our  strong  feeling  that  where  you  had 
sacrificed  so  much  for  the  cause  of  science,  we  were,  as  a  matter 
of  duty, — quite  apart  from  goodwill  to  you  personally — bound  to 
do  what  we  could,  each  according  to  his  ability. 

Darwin  is,  in  all  things,  noble  and  generous — one  of  those 
people  who  think  it  a  privilege  to  let  him  help.  I  know  he  viras 
very  pleased  with  what  you  said  to  him.  He  is  working  away 
at  a  new  edition  of  the  Descent  of  Man,  for  which  I  have  given 
him  some  notes  on  the  brain  question. 

And  apropos  of  that  how  is  your  own  particular  brain?     I 

back  la  belle  M against  all  the  physicians  in  the  world — 

even  against  mine  own  particular  JEsculapius,  Dr.  Clark — ^to 
find  the  sovereignest  remedy  against  the  blue  devils. 

Let  me  hear  from  you — most  abominable  of  correspondents 
as  I  am.  And  why  don't  you  send  Madame's  photograph  that 
you  have  promised? — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Pray  give  my  kind  remembrances  to  your  father. 

4  Marlborough  P|J.ace,  March  31,  1874. 

My  dear  Darwin — The  brain  business  *  is  more  than  half 
done,  and  I  will  soon  polish  it  off  and  send  it  to  you.  We  are 
going  down  to  Folkestone  for  a  week  on  Thursday,  and  I  shall 
take  it  with  me. 

I  do  not  know  what  is  doing  about  Dohm's  business  at  pres- 
ent. Foster  took  it  in  hand,  but  the  last  time  I  heard  he  was 
waiting  for  reports  from  Dew  and  Balfour. 

You  have  been  very  generous  as  always;  and  I  hope  that 
other  folk  may  follow  your  example,  but  like  yourself  I  am  not 
sanguine. 

I  have  had  an  awfuUy  tempting  offer  to  go  to  Yankee-land 
on  a  lecturing  expedition,  and  I  am  seriously  thinking  of  making 
an  experiment  next  spring. 

♦  A  note  on  the  brain  in  man  and  the  apes  for  the  second  edition 
of  the  Descent  of  Man. 


i874  LETTERS  TO   DARWIN  451 

The  chance  of  clearing  two  or  three  thousand  pounds  in  as 
many  months  is  not  to  be  sneezed  at  by  a  pbre  de  famille.  I  am 
getting  sick  of  the  state  of  things  here. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  have  heard  no  more  about  the  spirit  photographs  I 

4  Marlborough  Place,  j4prt/  16,  1874. 

My  dear  Darwin — Put  my  contribution  into  the  smallest 
type  possible,  for  it  will  be  read  by  none  but  anatomists;  and 
never  mind  where  it  goes. 

I  am  glad  you  agree  with  me  about  the  hand  and  foot  and 
skull  question.    As  Ward  *  said  of  Mill's  opinions,  you  can  only 

account  for  the  views  of  Messrs. and  Co.  on  the  supposition 

of  "  grave  personal  sin  "  on  their  part. 

I  had  a  letter  from  Dohrn  a  day  or  two  ago  in  which  he  tells 
me  he  has  written  to  you.    I  suspect  he  has  been  very  ill. 

Let  us  know  when  you  are  in  town,  and  believe  me, — Ever 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  allusion  in  the  letter  of  March  31,  to  certain  "  spirit 
photographs  "  refers  to  a  series  of  these  wonderful  produc- 
tions sent  to  him  by  a  connection  of  Mr.  Darwin's,  who  was 
interested  in  these  matters,  and  to  whom  he  replied,  showing 
how  the  effect  might  have  been  produced  by  simple  me- 
chanical means. 

It  was  at  this  gentleman's  house  that  in  January  a  care- 
fully organised  seance  was  held,  at  which  my  father  was 
present  incognito,  so  far  as  the  medium  was  concerned,  and 
on  which  he  wrote  the  following  report  to  Mr.  Darwin, 
referred  to  in  his  Life,  vol.  iii.  p.  187. 

It  must  be  noted  that  he  had  had  fairly  extensive  ex- 
perience of  spiritualism ;  he  had  made  regular  experiments 
with  Mrs.  Haydon  at  his  brother  George's  house  (the  paper 
on  which  these  are  recorded  is  undated,  but  it  must  have 
been  before  1863);  he  was  referred  to  as  a  disbeliever  in 
an  article  in  the  IP  all  Mall  Gazette  during  January  1869,  as 
a  sequel  to  which  a  correspondent  sent  him  an  account  of 
the  confessions  of  the  Fox  girls,  who  had  started  spiritualism 
forty  years  before.    At  the  houses  of  other  friends,  he  had 

♦  W.  G.  Ward.     (See  p.  338.) 


452  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxviii 

attended  seances  and  met  mediums,  by  whom  he  was  most 
unfavourably  impressed. 

Moreover,  when  invited  to  join  a  committee  of  investi- 
gation into  spiritualistic  manifestations,  he  replied: — 

I  regret  that  I  am  unable  to  accept  the  invitation  of  the 
Committee  of  the  Dialectical  Society  to  co-operate  with  a  com- 
mittee for  the  investigation  of  "  Spiritualism " ;  and  for  two 
reasons.  In  the  first  place,  I  have  not  time  for  such  an  inquiry, 
which  would  involve  much  trouble  and  (unless  it  were  unlike 
all  inquiries  of  that  kind  I  have  known)  much  annoyance.  In 
the  second  place,  I  take  no  interest  in  the  subject  The  only 
case  of  "  Spiritualism  "  I  have  had  the  opportunity  of  examin- 
ing into  for  myself,  was  as  gross  an  imposture  as  ever  came 
under  my  notice.  But  supposing  the  phenomena  to  be  genuine 
— ^they  do  not  interest  me.  If  anybody  would  endow  me  with 
the  faculty  of  listening  to  the  chatter  of  old  women  and  curates 
in  the  nearest  cathedral  town,  I  should  decline  the  privilege, 
having  better  things  to  do.  And  if  the  folk  in  the  spiritual  world 
do  not  talk  more  wisely  and  sensibly  than  their  friends  report 
them  to  do,  I  put  them  in  the  same  category.  The  only  good 
that  I  can  see  in  the  demonstration  of  the  truth  of  **  Spiritual- 
ism" is  to  furnish  an  additional  argument  against  suicide. 
Better  live  a  crossing-sweeper  than  die  and  be  made  to  talk 
twaddle  by  a  "  medium  "  hired  at  a  guinea  a  seance.* 

To  the  report  above  mentioned,  Prof.  G.  Darwin,  who 
also  was  present,  added  one  or  two  notes  and  corrections. 

Report  on  Stance 

/an,  27,  i874« 
We  met  in  a  small  room  at  the  top  of  the  house  with  a 
window  capable  of  being  completely  darkened  by  a  shutter  and 
curtains  opposite  the  door.  A  small  light  table  with  two  flaps 
and  four  legs,  unsteady  and  easily  moved,  occupied  the  middle 
of  the  room,  leaving  not  much  more  than  enough  space  for  the 
chairs  at  the  sides.  There  was  a  chair  at  each  end,  two  chairs 
on  the  fireplace  side,  and  one  on  the  other.  Mr,  X  (the  medium) 
was  seated  in  the  chair  at  the  door  end,  Mr.  Y  (the  host)  in 

*  Quoted  from  a  review  in  the  Daify  N'ews^  October  17,  1871,  of  the 
Report  on  Spiritualism  of  the  Committee  of  the  London  Dialectical 
Society. 


1874  A  SPIRITUALISTIC   STANCE  453 

the  opposite  chair,  Mr.  G.  Darwin  on  the  medium's  right,  Mr. 
Huxley  on  his  left,  Mr.  Z  between  Mr.  Huxley  and  Mr.  Darwin, 
The  table  was  small  enough  to  allow  these  five  people  to  rest 
their  hands  on  it,  linking  them  together.  On  the  table  was  a 
guitar  which  lay  obliquely  across  it,  an  accordion  on  the  medi- 
um's side  of  the  guitar,  a  couple  of  paper  horns,  a  Japanese  fan, 
a  matchbox,  and  a  candlestick  with  a  candle. 

At  first  the  room  was  slightly  darkened  (leaving  plenty  of 
light  from  the  window,  however)  and  we  all  sat  round  for  half 
an  hour.  My  right  foot  was  against  the  medium's  left  foot,  and 
two  fingers  of  my  right  hand  had  a  good  grip  of  the  little  finger 
of  his  left  hand.  I  compared  my  hand  (which  is  not  small  and 
is  strong)  with  his,  and  was  edified  by  its  much  greater  massive- 
ness  and  strength.  (No,  we  didn't  link  until  the  darkness. 
G.  D.) 

G.  D.'s  left  hand  was,  as  I  learn,  linked  with  medium's 
right  hand,  and  left  foot  on  medium's  left  [right]  foot. 

We  sat  thus  for  half  an  hour  as  aforesaid  and  nothing  hap- 
pened. 

The  room  was  next  thoroughly  darkened  by  shutting  the 
shutters  and  drawing  the  curtains.  Nevertheless,  by  great  good 
fortune  I  espied  three  points  of  light,  coming  from  the  lighted 
passage  outside  the  door.  One  of  these  came  beneath  the  door 
straight  to  my  eye,  the  other  two  were  on  the  wall  (or  on  a 
press)  obliquely  opposite.  By  still  greater  good  fortune,  these 
three  points  of  light  had  such  a  position  in  reference  to  my  eye 
that  they  gave  me  three  straight  lines  traversing  and  bounding 
the  space  in  which  the  medium  sat,  and  I  at  once  saw  that  if 
medium  moved  his  body  forwards  or  backwards  he  must  occult 
one  of  my  three  rays.  While  therefore  taking  care  to  feel  his 
foot  and  keep  a  good  grip  of  his  hand,  I  fixed  my  eyes  intently 
on  rays  A  and  B.  For  I  felt  sure  that  I  could  trust  to  G.  D. 
keeping  a  sharp  look-out  on  the  right  hand  and  foot;  and  so 
no  instrument  of  motion  was  left  to  the  medium  but  his  body 
and  head,  the  movements  of  which  could  not  have  been  dis- 
cernible in  absolute  darkness.  Nothing  happened  for  some  time. 
At  length  a  very  well  executed  muscular  twitching  of  the  arm 
on  my  side  began,  and  I  amused  myself  by  comparing  it  with  the 
convulsions  of  a  galvanised  frog's  leg,  but  at  the  same  time  kept 
a  very  bright  look-out  on  my  two  rays  A  and  B. 

The  twitchings  ceased,  and  then  after  a  little  time  A  was 
shut  out  B  then  became  obscure,  and  A  became  visible.  "  Ho 
ho !  "  thought  I,  "  Medium's  head  is  well  over  the  table.    Now 


454  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HyXLEY         chap,  xxviii 

we  are  going  to  have  some  manifestations."  Immediately  fol- 
lowed a  noise  obviously  produced  by  the  tumbling  over  of  the 
accordion  and  some  shifting  of  the  position  of  the  guitar.  Next 
came  a  twanging — ^very  slight,  but  of  course  very  audible — of 
some  of  the  strings,  during  which  B  was  invisible.  By  and  by 
B  and  A  became  visible  again,  and  Medium's  voice  likewise 
showed  that  he  had  got  back  to  his  first  position.  But  after  he 
had  returned  to  this  position  there  was  a  noise  of  the  guitar 
and  other  things  on  the  table  being  stirred,  and  creeping  noises 
like  something  light  moving  over  the  table.  But  no  more  actual 
twanging. 

To  my  great  disgust  G.  D.  now  began  to  remark  that  he  sa>v 
two  spots  of  light,  which  I  suppose  must  have  had  the  same 
origin  as  my  rays  A  and  B,  and,  moreover,  that  something  occa- 
sionally occulted  one  or  other  of  them.  (Note:  No,  not  till  we 
changed  places,  G.  H.  D.)  I  blessed  him  for  spoiling  my  game, 
but  the  effect  was  excellent.  Nothing  more  happened.  By  and 
by,  after  some  talk  about  these  points  of  light,  the  medium  sug- 
gested that  this  light  was  distracting,  and  that  we  had  better 
shut  it  out.  The  suggestion  was  very  dexterously  and  indirectly 
made,  and  was  caught  up  more  strongly  (I  think  by  Mr.  Z). 
Anyhow,  we  agreed  to  stop  out  all  light.  The  circle  was  broken, 
and  the  candle  was  lighted  for  this  purpose.  I  then  took  occa- 
sion to  observe  that  the  guitar  was  turned  round  into  the  posi- 
tion noted  in  the  margin,  the  end  being  near  my  left  hand.  On 
examining  it  I  found  a  longish  end  of  one  of  the  catgut  strings 
loose,  and  I  found  that  by  sweeping  this  end  over  the  strings 
I  could  make  quite  as  good  twangs  as  we  heard.  I  could  have 
done  this  just  as  well  with  my  mouth  as  with  my  hand — and  I 
could  have  pulled  the  guitar  about  by  the  end  of  the  catgut  in 
my  mouth  and  so  have  disturbed  the  other  things — as  they  were 
disturbed. 

Before  the  candle  was  lighted  some  discussion  arose  as  to 
why  the  spirits  would  not  do  any  better  (started  by  Mr.  Y  and 
Mr.  Z,  I  think),  in  which  the  medium  joined.  It  appeared  that 
(in  the  opinion  of  the  spirits  as  interpreted  by  the  medium)  we 
were  not  quite  rightly  placed.  When  the  discussion  arose  I 
made  a  bet  with  myself  that  the  result  would  be  that  either  I 
or  G.  D.  would  have  to  change  places  with  somebody  else.  And 
I  won  my  wager  (I  have  just  paid  it  with  the  remarkably  good 
cigar  I  am  now  smoking).  G.  D.  had  to  come  round  to  my 
side,  Mr.  Z  went  to  the  end,  and  Mr.  Y  took  G.  D.'s  place. 
"  Good,  Medium,"  said  I  to  myself.    "  Now  we  shall  see  some- 


1874  A  SPIRITUALISTIC  STANCE  455 

thing."  We  were  in  pitch  darkness,  and  all  I  could  do  was  to 
bring  my  sense  of  touch  to  bear  with  extreme  tension  upon  the 
medium's  hand — still  well  in  my  grip. 

Before  long  Medium  became  a  good  deal  convulsed  at  in- 
tervals, and  soon  a  dragging  sound  was  heard,  and  Mr.  Y  told 
us  that  the  arm-chair  (mark  it$  position)  had  moved  up  against 
his  leg,  and  was  shoving  against  him.  By  degrees  the  arm- 
chair became  importunate,  and  by  the  manner  of  Mr.  Y's  re- 
marks it  was  clear  that  his  attention  was  entirely  given  to  its 
movements. 

Then  I  felt  the  fingers  of  the  medium's  left  hand  become 
tense — in  such  a  manner  as  to  show  that  the  muscles  of  the  left 
arm  were  contracting  sympathetically  with  those  of  the  other 
arm  on  which  a  considerable  strain  was  evidently  being  put. 
Mr.  Y's  observations  upon  the  eccentricities  of  the  arm-chair 
became  louder — a  noise  was  heard  as  of  the  chair  descending 
on  the  table  and  shoving  the  guitar  before  it  (while  at  the  same 
time,  or  just  before,  there  was  a  crash  of  a  falling  thermometer), 
and  the  tension  of  the  left  arm  ceased.  The  chair  had  got  on  to 
the  table.  Says  the  Medium  to  Mr.  Y,  "  Your  hand  was  against 
mine  all  the  time."  "  Well,  no,"  replied  Mr.  Y,  "  not  quite.  For 
a  moment  as  the  chair  was  coming  up  I  don't  think  it  was." 
But  it  was  agreed  that  this  momentary  separation  made  no 
difference.  I  said  nothing,  but,  like  the  parrot,  thought  the 
more.  After  this  nothing  further  happened.  But  conversation 
went  on,  and  more  than  once  the  medium  was  careful  to  point 
out  that  the  chair  came  upon  the  table  while  his  hand  was  really 
in  contact  with  Mr.  Y's. 

G.  D.  will  tell  you  if  this  is  a  fair  statement  of  the  facts.  I 
believe  it  is,  for  my  attention  was  on  the  stretch  for  those  mortal 
two  hours  and  a  half,  and  I  did  not  allow  myself  to  be  distracted 
from  the  main  points  in  any  way.  My  conclusion  is  that  Mr.  X 
is  a  cheat  and  an  impostor,  and  I  have  no  more  doubt  that  he  got 
Mr.  Y  to  sit  on  his  right  hand,  knowing  from  the  turn  of  his  con- 
versation that  it  would  be  easy  to  distract  his  attention,  and 
that  he  then  moved  the  chair  against  Mr.  Y  with  his  leg,  and 
finally  coolly  lifted  (it)  on  to  the  table  than  that  I  am  writing 
these  lines.  T.  H.  H. 

As  Mr.  G.  Darwin  wrote  of  the  stance,  "  It  has  given  me  a 

lesson  with  respect  to  the  worthlessness  of  evidence  which  I 

shall  always  remember,  and  besides  will  make  me  very  difficult 

in  trusting  myself.    Unless  I  had  seen  it,  I  could  not  have  be- 

30 


456  LIFE  OF   P^IOFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxviii 

lieved  in  the  evidence  of  anyone  with  such  perfect  bona  fides  as 
Mr.  Y  being  so  wofthless. 

On  receiving  this  report  Mr.  Darwin  wrote  (Life,  iL  p. 
188):— 

Though  the  seance  did  tire  you  so  much  it  was,  I  think, 
really  worth  the  exertion,  as  the  same  sort  of  things  are  done 
at  all  the  seances  ....  and  now  to  my  mind  an  enormous 
weight  of  evidence  would  be  requisite  to  make  me  believe  in 
anything  beyond  mere  trickery. 

The  following  letter  to  Mr.  Morley,  then  editor  of  the 
Fortnightly  Review,  shows  that  my  father,  was  already  think- 
ing of  writing  upon  Hume,  though  he  did  not  carry  out 
this  intention  till  1878. 

The  article  referred  to  in  the  second  letter  is  that  on 
animals  as  automata. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  /um  4,  1874. 

My  dear  Mr.  Morley — I  assure  you  that  it  was  a  great  dis- 
appointment to  me  not  to  be  able  to  visit  you,  but  we  had  an 
engagement  of  some  standing  for  Oxford. 

Hume  is  frightfully  tempting — I  thought  so  only  the  other 
day  when  I  saw  the  new  edition  advertised — ^and  now  I  would 
gladly  write  about  him  in  the  Fortnightly  if  I  were  only  sure 
of  being  able  to  keep  any  engagement  to  that  effect  I  might 
make. 

But  I  have  yet  a  course  of  lectures  before  me,  and  an  even- 
ing discourse  to  deliver  at  the  British  Association — to  say  noth- 
ing of  opening  the  Manchester  Medical  School  in  October — and 
polishing  off  a  lot  of  scientific  work.  So  you  see  I  have  not  a 
chance  of  writing  about  Hume  for  months  to  come,  and  you 
had  much  better  not  trust  to  such  a  very  questionable  reed  as 
I  am. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  JSTov,  15,  1874. 

My  dear  Morley — Many  thanks  for  your  abundantly  suffi- 
cient cheque — rather  too  much,  I  think,  for  an  article  which  had 
been  gutted  by  the  newspapers. 

I  am  always  very  glad  to  have  anything  of  mine  in  the  Fort- 
nightly, as  it  is  sure  to  be  in  good  company ;  but  I  am  becoming 
as  spoiled  as  a  maiden  with  many  wooers.  However,  as  far  as 
the  Fortnightly  which  is  my  old  love,  and  the  Contemporary 


i874  LETTER  TO   HAECKEL  457 

which  is  my  new,  are  concerned,  I  hope  to  remain  as  constant  as 
a  persistent  bigamist  can  be  said  to  be. 

It  will  give  me  great  pleasure  to  dine  with  you,  and  Dec.  i 
will  suit  me  excellently  well. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  year  winds  up  with  a  New  Year's  greeting  to 
Professor  Haeckel. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  London,  N.W., 
Dec,  28,  1874. 

My  dear  Haeckel — This  must  reach  you  in  time  to  wish 
you  and  yours  a  happy  New  Year  in  English  fashion.  May 
your  shadow  never  be  less,  and  may  all  your  enemies,  unbeliev- 
ing dogs  who  resist  the  Prophet  of  Evolution,  be  defiled  by  the 
sitting  of  jackasses  upon  their  grandmothers'  graves !  an  oriental 
wish  appropriate  to  an  ex-traveller  in  Egypt. 

I  have  written  a  notice  of  the  "Anthropogenic"  for  the 
Academy,  but  I  am  so  busy  that  I  am  afraid  I  should  never  have 
done  it — ^but  for  being  put  into  a  great  passion — by  an  article 
in  the  Quarterly  Review  for  last  July,  which  I  read  only  a  few 

days  ago.    My  friend  Mr. ,  to  whom  I  had  to  administer  a 

gentle  punishment  some  time  ago,  has  been  at  the  same  tricks 
again,  but  much  worse  than  his  former  performance — you  will 
see  that  I  have  dealt  with  as  you  deal  with  a  "  PfaflFe."  *  There 
are  "  halb-PfaflFen  "  as  well  as  "  halb-Aflfen."  f  So  if  what  I 
say  about  "Anthropogenic"  seems  very  little — to  what  I  say 
about  the  Quarterly  Review — do  not  be  offended.  It  will  all 
serve  the  good  cause. 

I  have  been  working  very  hard  lately  at  the  lower  vertebrata, 
and  getting  out  results  which  will  interest  you  greatly.  Your 
suggestion  that  Rathke's  canals  in  Amphioxus  %  are  the  Wolffian 
ducts  was  a  capital  shot,  but  it  just  missed  the  mark  because 
Rathke's  canals  do  not  exist.  Nevertheless  there  are  two  half 
canals,  the  dorsal  walls  of  which  meet  in  the  raphe  described 
by  Stieda,  and  the  plaited  lining  of  this  wall  (a)  is,  I  believe, 
the  renal  organ.  Moreover,  I  have  found  the  skull  and  brain  of 
Amphioxus,  both  of  which  are  very  large  (like  a  vertebrate 
embryo's)  instead  of  being  rudimentary  as  we  all  have  thought, 
and  exhibit  the  primitive  segmentation  of  the  "  Urwirbelthier  "  * 
skull. 

*  Parson.  f  Lit.  half-apes ;  the  Prosimise  and  Lemurs. 

X  The  Lancelet.  •  Primitive  vertebrate. 


458  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxviu 

Thus  the  skull  of  Petromyzon  answers  to  about  fourteen 
segments  of  the  body  of  Amphioxus,  fused  together  and  indis- 
tinguishable in  even  the  earliest  embryonic  state  of  the  higher 
vertebrata. 

Does  this  take  your  breath  away?  Well,  in  du^  time  you 
shall  be  convinced.  I  sent  in  a  brief  notice  to  the  last  meeting 
of  the  Royal  Society,  which  will  soon  be  in  your  hands. 

I  need  not  t^ll  you  of  the  importance  of  all  this.  It  is  un- 
lucky for  Semper  that  he  has  just  put  Atnphioxus  out  of  the 
Vertebrata  altogether — ^because  it  is  demonstrable  that  Atn- 
phioxus is  nearer  than  could  have  been  hoped  to  the  condition 
of  the  primitive  vertebrate — a  far  more  regular  and  respectable 
sort  of  ancestor  than  even  you  suspected.  For  you  see 
"  Acrania  "  will  have  to  go. 

I  think  we  must  have  an  English  translation  of  the  An- 
thropogenie.  There  is  great  interest  in  these  questions  now,  and 
your  book  is  very  readable,  to  say  nothing  of  its  higher  qualities. 

My  wife  (who  sends  her  kindest  greetings)  and  I  were 
charmed  with  the  photograph.  [As  for  our]  publication  in  that 
direction,  the  seven  volumes  are  growing  into  stately  folios. 
You  would  not  know  them. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

How  will  you  read  this  scrawl  now  that  Gegenbaur  is  gone  ? 

In  the  article  here  referred  to,  a  review  of  a  book  by 
Prof.  G.  H.  Darwin,  a  personal  attack  of  an  unjustifiable 
character  was  made  upon  him,  and  through  him,  upon 
Charles  Darwin.  The  authorship  of  the  review  in  question 
had  come  to  be  known,  and  Huxley  writes  to  his  friend : — 

I  entirely  sympathise  with  your  feeling  about  the  attack  on 
George.  If  anybody  tries  that  on  with  my  boy  L.,  the  old  wolf 
will  show  all  the  fangs  he  has  left  by  that  time,  depend  upon 
it.  .  .  . 

You  ought  to  be  like  one  of  the  blessed  gods  of  Elysium,  and 
let  the  inferior  deities  do  battle  with  the  infernal  powers.  More- 
over, the  severest  and  most  effectual  punishment  for  this  sort  of 
moral  assassination  is  quietly  to  ignore  the  offender  and  give 
him  the  cold  shoulder.  He  knows  why  he  gets  it,  and  society 
comes  to  know  why,  and  though  society  is  more  or  less  of  a 
dunderhead  it  has  honourable  instincts,  and  the  man  in  the  cold 
finds  no  cloak  that  will  cover  him. 


CHAPTER    XXIX 

1875-1876 

In  the  year  1875  the  bitter  agitation  directed  against 
experimental  physiology  came  to  a  head.  It  had  existed 
in  England  for  several  years.  In  1870,  when  President  of 
the  British  Association,  Huxley  had  been  violently  attacked 
for  speaking  in  defence  of  Brown  Sequard,  the  French 
physiologist.  The  name  of  vivisection,  indifferently  applied 
to  all  experiments  on  animals,  whether  carried  out  by  the 
use  of  the  knife  or  not,  had,  as  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir)  William 
Smith  put  it,  the  opposite  effect  on  many  minds  to  that  of 
the  "  blessed  word  Mesopotamia."  Misrepresentation  was 
rife  even  among  the  most  estimable  and  well-meaning  of  the 
opponents  of  vivisection,  because  they  fancied  they  saw 
traces  of  the  practice  everywhere,  all  the  more,  perhaps,  for 
not  having  sufficient  technical  knowledge  for  proper  dis- 
crimination. One  of  the  most  flagrant  instances  of  this 
kind  of  thing  was  a  letter  in  the  Record  charging  Huxley 
with  advocating  vivisections  before  children,  if  not  by  them. 
Passages  from  the  Introduction  to  his  Elementary  Physi- 
ology, urging  that  beginners  should  be  shown  the  structures 
under  discussion,  examples  for  which  could  easily  be  pro- 
vided from  the  domestic  animals,  were  put  side  by  side  with 
later  passages  in  the  book,  such,  for  instance,  as  statements 
of  fact  as  to  the  behaviour  of  severed  nerves  under  irritation. 
A  sinister  inference  was  drawn  from  this  combination,  and 
published  as  fact  without  further  verification.  Of  this  he 
remarks  emphatically  in  his  address  on  "  Elementary  In- 
struction in  Physiology,"  1877  (Collected  Essays,  iii.  300) : 

459 


460  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 

It  is,  I  hope,  unnecessary  for  me  to  give  a  formal  contradic- 
tion to  the  silly  fiction,  which  is  assiduously  circulated  by  the 
fanatics  who  not  only  ought  to  know,  but  do  know,  that  their 
assertions  are  untrue,  that  I  have  advocated  the  introduction 
of  that  experimental  discipline  which  is  absolutely  indispensable 
to  the  professed  physiologist,  into  elementary  teaching. 

Moreover,  during  the  debates  on  the  Vivisection  Bill  in 
1876,  the  late  Lord  Shaftesbury  made  use  of  this  story- 
Huxley  was  extremely  indignant,  and  wrote  home : — 

Did  you  see  Lord  Shaftesbury's  speech  in  Tuesday's  Times f 
I  saw  it  by  chance,*  and  have  written  a  sharp  letter  to  the 
Times. 

This  letter  appeared  on  May  26,  when  he  wrote  again : — 

You  will  have  had  my  note,  and  know  all  about  Lord 
Shaftesbury  and  his  lies  by  this  time.  Surely  you  could  not 
imagine  on  any  authority  that  I  was  such  an  idiot  as  to  recom- 
mend boys  and  girls  to  perform  experiments  which  are  difficult 
to  skilled  anatomists,  to  say  nothing  of  other  reasons. 

Letter  to  the  Times 

In  your  account  of  the  late  debate  ill  the  House  of  Lords  on 
the  Vivisection  Bill,  Lord  Shaftesbury  is  reported  to  have  said 
that  in  my  Lessons  in  Elementary  Physiology,  it  is  strongly 
insisted  that  such  experiments  as  those  subjoined  shall  not 
merely  be  studied  in  the  manual,  but  actually  repeated,  either 
by  the  boys  and  girls  themselves  or  else  by  the  teachers  in  their 
presence,  as  plainly  appears  from  the  preface  to  the  second 
edition. 

I  beg  leave  to  give  the  most  emphatic  and  unqualified  contra- 
diction to  this  assertion,  for  which  there  is  not  a  shadow  of 
justification  either  in  the  preface  to  the  second  edition  of  my 
Lessons  or  in  anything  I  have  ever  said  or  written  elsewhere. 
The  most  important  paragraph  of  the  preface  which  is  the  sub- 
ject of  Lord  Shaftesbury's  misquotation  and  misrepresentation 
stands  as  follows: — 

"  For  the  purpose  of  acquiring  a  practical,  though  ele- 
mentary,  acquaintance   with   physiological    anatomy   and   his- 

♦  Being  in  Edinburgh,  he  had  been  reading  the  Scotch  papers,  and 
*'  the  reports  of  the  Scotch  papers  as  to  what  takes  place  in  Parliament 
are  meagre." 


1876        CONTROVERSY  WITH   LORD   SHAFTESBURY         461 

tology,  the  organs  and  tissues  of  the  commonest  domestic  ani- 
mals afford  ample  materials.  The  principal  points  in  the 
structure  and  mechanism  of  the  heart,  the  lung[s,  the  kidneys, 
or  the  eye  of  man  may  be  perfectly  illustrated  by  the  correspond- 
ing parts  of  a  sheep;  while  the  phenomena  of  the  circulation, 
many  of  the  most  important  properties  of  living  tissues  are 
better  shown  by  the  common  frog  than  by  any  of  the  higher 
animals." 

If  Lord  Shaftesbury  had  the  slightest  theoretical  or  practical 
acquaintance  with  the  subject  about  which  he  is  so  anxious  to 
legislate,  he  would  know  tiiat  physiological  anatomy  is  not  ex- 
actly the  same  thing  as  experimental  physiology;  and  he  would 
be  aware  that  the  recommendations  of  the  paragraph  I  have 
quoted  might  be  fully  carried  into  effect  without  the  perform- 
ance of  even  a  solitary  "  vivisection."  The  assertion  that  I  have 
ever  suggested  or  desired  the  introduction  of  vivisection  into 
the  teaching  of  elementary  physiology  in  schools,  is,  I  repeat, 
contrary  to  fact. 

On  the  next  day  (May  27)  appeared  a  reply  from  Lord 
Shaftesbury,  in  which  his  entire  good  faith  is  equally  con- 
spicuous with  his  misapprehension  of  the  subject. 

Lord  Shaftesbury's  Reply 

The  letter  from  Professor  Huxley  in  the  Times  of  this  morn- 
ing demands  an  immediate  reply. 

The  object  that  I  supposed  the  learned  professor  had  in  view 
was  gathered  from  the  prefaces  to  the  several  editions  of  his 
work  on  Elementary  Physiology. 

The  preface  to  the  first  e^tion  states  that  "the  following 
lessons  in  elementary  physiology  are,  primarily,  intended  to 
serve  the  purpose  of  a  text-book  for  teachers  and  learners  in 
boys'  and  girls'  schools." 

It  was  published,  therefore,  as  a  manual  for  the  young,  as 
well  as  the  old. 

Now,  any  reader  of  the  preface  to  the  first  edition  would 
have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  teachers  and  learners  could 
acquire  something  solid,  and  worth  having,  from  the  text-book 
before  them.  But  the  preface  to  the  second  edition  nearly 
destroys  that  expectation.  Here  is  the  passage : — "  It  will  be 
well  for  those  who  attempt  to  study  elementary  physiology  to 
bear  in  mind  the  important  truth  that  the  knowledge  of  science 


462  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 

which  is  attainable  by  mere  reading,  though  infinitely  better 
than  ignorance,  is  knowledge  of  a  very  different  kind  from 
that  which  arises  from  direct  contact  with  fact." 

"  Direct  contact  with  fact  I  "  What  can  that  mean  (so,  at 
least,  very  many  ask)  but  a  declaration,  on  high  authority,  to 
teachers  and  learners  that  vivisection  alone  can  give  them  any 
real  and  effective  instruction  ? 

But  the  subsequent  passage  is  still  stronger,  for  it  states 
"  that  the  worth  of  the  pursuit  of  science,  as  an  intellectual  dis- 
cipline, is  almost  lost  by  those  who  only  seek  it  in  books." 

Is  not  language  like  this  calculated  to  touch  the  zeal  and 
vanity  of  teachers  and  learners  at  the  very  quick,  and  urge  them 
to  improve  their  own  minds  and  stand  well  in  the  eyes  of  the 
profession  and  the  public  by  positive  progress  in  experimental 
physiology?  Ordinary  readers,  most  people  would  think,  could 
come  to  no  other  conclusion. 

But  a  disclaimer  from  Professor  Huxley  is  enough;  I  am 
sorry  to  have  misunderstood  him ;  and  I  must  ask  his  pardon.  I 
sincerely  rejoice  to  have  received  such  an  assurance  that  his 
great  name  shall  never  be  used  for  such  a  project  as  that  which 
excited  our  fears. 

On  this  he  wrote : — 

You  will  have  seen  Lord  Shaftesbury's  reply  to  my  letter. 
I  thought  it  frank  and  straightforward,  and  I  have  written  a 
private  letter*  to  the  old  boy  of  a  placable  and  proper  char- 
acter. 

In  1874  he  had  also  had  a  small  passage  of  arms  with  the 
late  Mr.  W.  E.  Forster,  then  Vice-President  of  the  Council, 
upon  the  same  subject.  Mr.  Forster  was  about  to  leave 
office,  and  when  he  gave  his  official  authorisation  for  sum- 
mer courses  of  lectures  at  South  Kensington  on  Biolog^y, 
Chemistry,  Geology,  etc.,  he  did  so  with  the  special  proviso 
that  there  be  no  vivisection  experiments  in  any  of  the 
courses,  and  further,  appended  a  Memorandum,  explaining 
the  reasons  on  which  he  acted. 

Now,  although  Huxley  was  mentioned  by  name  as  hav- 
ing taken  care  to  avoid  inflicting  pain  in  certain  previous 

♦  **  Huxley,  the  Professor,  has  written  me  a  very  civil,  nay  kind, 
I'itter.  I  replied  in  the  same  spirit.**  (Lord  Shaftesbury,  Life  and 
Work,  iii.  373i  June  3,  1876.) 


1874  VIVISECTION  463 

experiments  which  had  come  to  Mr.  Forster's  knowledge, 
the  memorandum  evoked  from  him  a  strong  protest  to  the 
Lord  President,  to  whom,  as  Mr.  Forster  expressly  inti- 
mated, an  appeal  might  properly  be  made. 

To  beg^n  with,  the  memorandum  contained  a  mistake  in 
fact,  referring  to  his  regular  course  at  South  Kensington, 
experiments  which  had  taken  place  two  years  before  at  one 
of  the  Courses  to  Teachers.  This  course  was  non-official ; 
Huxley's  position  in  it  was  simply  that  of  a  private  person 
to  whom  the  Department  offered  a  contract,  subject  to 
official  control  and  criticism,  so  far  as  touched  that  course, 
and  entirely  apart  from  his  regular  position  at  the  School 
of  Mines.  The  experiments  of  1872  were  performed,  as 
he  had  reason  to  believe,  with  the  full  sanction  of  the  De- 
partment. If  the  Board  chose  to  go  back  upon  what  had 
happened  two  years  before,  he  was  of  course  subject  to 
their  criticism,  but  then  he  ought  in  justice  to  be  allowed  to 
explain  in  what  these  experiments  really  consisted.  What 
they  were,  appears  from  a  note  to  Sir  J.  Donnelly : — 

My  dear  Donnelly — It  will  be  the  best  course,  perhaps,  if 
I  set  down  in  writing  what  I  have  to  say  respecting  the  vivi- 
sections for  physiological  purposes  which  have  been  performed 
here,  and  concerning  which  you  made  me  a  communication  from 
the  Vice-President  of  the  Council  this  morning. 

I  have  always  felt  it  my  duty  to  defend  those  physiologists 
who,  like  Brown  Sequard,  by  making  experiments  on  living 
animals,  have  added  immensely  not  only  to  scientific  physiology, 
but  to  the  means  of  alleviating  human  suffering,  against  the 
often  ignorant  and  sometimes  malicious  clamour  which  has  been 
raised  against  them. 

But  personally,  indeed  I  may  say  constitutionally,  the  per- 
formance of  experiments  upon  living  and  conscious  animals  is 
extremely  disagreeable  to  me,  and  I  have  never  followed  any 
line  of  investigation  in  which  such  experiments  are  required. 

When  the  course  of  instruction  in  Physiology  here  was  com- 
menced, the  question  of  giving  experimental  demonstrations 
became  a  matter  of  anxious  consideration  with  me.  It  was  clear 
that,  without  such  demonstrations,  the  subject  could  not  be 
properly  taught.  It  was  no  less  clear  from  what  had  happened 
to  me  when,  as  President  of  the  British  Association,  I  had  dc- 


464 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 


fended  Brown  Sequard,  that  I  might  expect  to  meet  with  every 
description  of  abuse  and  misrepresentation  if  such  demonstra- 
tions were  given. 

It  did  not  appear  to  me,  however,  that  the  latter  considera- 
tion ought  to  weigh  with  me,  and  I  took  such  a  course  as  I 
believe  is  defensible  against  everything  but  misrepresentation. 

I  gave  strict  instructions  to  tlie  Demonstrators  who  assisted 
me  that  no  such  experiments  were  to  be  performed,  unless  the 
animal  were  previously  rendered  insensible  to  pain  either  by 
destruction  of  the  brain  or  by  the  administration  of  anesthetics, 
and  I  have  every  reason  to  believe  that  my  instructions  ivere 
carried  out.  I  do  not  see  what  I  can  do  beyond  this,  or  ho^v  I 
can  give  Mr.  Forster  any  better  guarantee  than  is  given  in  my 
assurance  that  my  dislike  to  the  infliction  of  pain  both  as  a 
matter  of  principle  and  of  feeling  is  quite  as  strong  as  his  own 
can  be. 

If  Mr.  Forster  is  not  satisfied  with  this  assurance,  and  with 
its  practical  result  that  our  experiments  are  made  only  on  non- 
sentient  animals,  then  I  am  afraid  that  my  position  as  teacher 
of  Physiology  must  come  to  an  end. 

If  I  am  to  act  in  that  capacity  I  cannot  consent  to  be  pro- 
hibited from  showing  the  circulation  in  a  frog's  foot  because  the 
frog  is  made  slightly  uncomfortable  by  being  tied  up  for  that 
purpose;  nor  from  showing  the  fundamental  properties  of 
nerves,  because  extirpating  the  brain  of  the  same  animal  inflicts 
one-thousandth  part  of  the  prolonged  suffering  which  it  under- 
goes when  it  makes  its  natural  exit  from  the  world  by  beii\g 
slowly  forced  down  the  throat  of  a  duck,  and  crushed  and 
asphyxiated  in  that  creature's  stomach. 

I  shall  be  very  glad  to  wait  upon  Mr.  Forster  if  he  desires 
to  see  me.  Of  course  I  am  most  anxious  to  meet  his  views  as 
far  as  I  can,  consistently  with  my  position  as  a  person  bound 
to  teach  properly  any  subject  in  which  he  undertakes  to  give 
instruction.  But  I  am  quite  clear  as  to  the  amount  of  freedom 
of  action  which  it  is  necessary  I  should  retain,  and  if  you  will 
kindly  communicate  the  contents  of  this  letter  to  the  Vice-Presi- 
dent of  the  Council,  he  will  be  able  to  judge  for  himself  how 
far  his  sense  of  what  is  right  will  leave  me  that  freedom,  or 
render  it  necessary  for  me  to  withdraw  from  what  I  should 
regard  as  a  false  position. 

But  there  was  a  further  and  more  vital  question.  He 
had  already  declared  through  Major  (now  Sir  John)  Don- 


i874  VIVISECTION  465 

nelly,  that  he  would  only  undertake  a  course  which  involved 
no  vivisection.  Further  to  require  an  official  assurance  that 
he  would  not  do  that  which  he  had  explicitly  affirmed  he 
did  not  intend  to  do,  affected  him  personally,  and  he  there- 
fore declined  the  proposal  made  to  him  to  give  the  course 
in  question. 

It  followed  from  the  fact  that  experiments  on  animals 
formed  no  part  of  his  official  course,  and  from  his  refusal 
under  the  circumstances  to  undertake  the  non-official  course, 
that  his  opinions  and  present  practices  in  regard  to  the  ques- 
tion of  vivisection,  did  not  come  under  their  Lordships* 
jurisdiction,  and  he  protested  against  the  introduction  of 
his  name,  and  of  the  approbation  or  disapprobation  of  his 
views,  into  an  official  document  relating  to  a  matter  with 
which  he  had  nothing  to  do. 

In  an  intermediate  paragraph  of  the  same  document,  he 
could  not  resist  asking  for  an  official  definition  of  vivisection 
as  forbidden,  in  its  relation  to  the  experiments  he  had  made 
to  the  class  of  teachers. 

I  should  have  to  ask  whether  it  means  that  the  teacher  who 
has  undertaken  to  perform  no  "  vivisection  experiments "  is 
thereby  debarred  from  inflicting  pain,  however  slight,  in  order 
to  observe  the  action  of  living  matter ;  for  it  might  be  said  to  be 
unworthy  quibbling,  if,  having  accepted  the  conditions  of  the 
minute,  he  thought  himself  at  liberty  to  inflict  any  amount  of 
pain,  so  long  as  he  did  not  actually  cut. 

But  if  such  is  the  meaning  officially  attached  to  the  word 
"  vivisection,"  the  teacher  would  be  debarred  from  showing  the 
circulation  in  a  frog's  foot  or  in  a  tadpole's  tail;  he  must  not 
show  an  animalcule,  uncomfortably  fixed  under  the  microscope, 
nor  prick  his  own  finger  for  the  sake  of  obtaining  a  drop  of 
living  blood.  The  living  particles  which  float  in  that  liquid 
undoubtedly  feel  as  much  (or  as  little)  as  a  frog  under  the 
influence  of  anaesthetics,  or  deprived  of  its  brain,  does;  and  the 
teacher  who  shows  his  pupils  the  wonderful  phenomena  ex- 
hibited by  dying  blood,  might  be  charged  with  gloating  over  the 
agonies  of  the  colourless  corpuscles,  with  quite  as  much  justice 
as  I  have  been  charged  with  inciting  boys  and  girls  to  cruelty 
by  describing  the  results  of  physiological  experiments,  which 
they  are  as  likely  to  attempt  as  they  are  to  determine  the  longi- 
tude of  their  schoolroom. 


466 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 


However,  I  will  not  trouble  your  Lordship  with  any  further 
indication  of  the  difficulties  which,  as  I  imagine,  will  attend  the 
attempt  to  carry  the  Minute  into  operation,  if  instruction  is  to 
be  given  in  Physiology,  or  even  in  general  Biology. 

The  upshot  of  the  matter  was  that  the  Minute  was  al- 
tered so  as  to  refer  solely  to  future  courses,  and  on  Februar>' 
20  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Forster : — 

I  cannot  allow  you  to  leave  office  without  troubling  you  with 
the  expression  of  my  thanks  for  the  very  great  kindness  and  con- 
sideration which  I  have  received  from  you  on  all  occasions,  and 
particularly  in  regard  to  the  question  of  vivisection,  on  which  I 
ventured  to  some  extent,  though  I  think  not  very  widely  or 
really,  to  differ  from  you. 

The  modification  which  you  were  good  enough  to  make  in 
your  minute  removed  all  my  objections  to  undertaking  the  Sum- 
mer Course. 

And  I  am  sure  that  if  that  course  had  happened  to  be  a 
physiological  one  I  could  do  all  I  want  to  do  in  the  way  of  ex- 
periment, without  infringing  the  spirit  of  your  minute,  though  I 
confess  that  the  letter  of  it  would  cause  me  more  perplexity. 

As  to  his  general  attitude  to  the  subject,  it  must  be 
noted,  as  said  above  in  the  letter  to  Sir  J.  Donnelly,  that  he 
never  followed  any  line  of  research  involving  experiments 
on  living  and  conscious  animals.  Though,  as  will  be  seen 
from  various  letters,  he  considered  such  experiments  justi- 
fiable, his  personal  feelings  prevented  him  from  performing 
them  himself.  Like  Charles  Darwin,  he  was  very  fond  of 
animals,  and  our  pets  in  London  found  in  him  an  indul- 
gent master. 

But  if  he  did  not  care  to  undertake  such  experiments 
personally,  he  held  it  false  sentiment  to  blame  others  who 
did  disagreeable  work  for  the  good  of  humanity,  and  false 
logic  to  allow  pain  to  be  inflicted  in  the  cause  of  sport  while 
forbidding  it  for  the  cause  of  science.  (See  his  address  on 
"  Instruction  in  Elementary  Physiology,"  Coll,  Essays,  iii. 
300  seq,)  Indeed,  he  declared  that  he  trusted  to  the  fox- 
hunting instincts  of  the  House  of  Commons  rather  than  to 
any  real  interest  in  science  in  that  body,  for  a  moderate 
treatment  of  the  question  of  vivisection. 


1875  VIVISECTION  467 

The  subject  is  again  dealt  with  in  "The  Progress  of 
Science,"  1887  (Coll.  Essays,  i.  122  scq),  from  which  I  may 
quote  two  sentences : — 

The  history  of  all  branches  of  science  proves  that  they  must 
attain  a  considerable  stage  of.  development  before  they  yield 
practical  "  fruits  " ;  and  this  is  eminently  true  of  physiology. 

Unless  the  fanaticism  of  philozoic  sentiment  overpowers  the 
voice  of  humanity,  and  the  love  of  dogs  and  cats  supersedes  that 
of  one's  neighbour,  the  progress  of  experimental  physiology  and 
pathology  will,  indubitably,  in  course  of  time,  place  medicine 
and  hygiene  upon  a  rational  basis. 

The  dangers  ot  prohibition  by  law  are  discussed  in  a 
letter  to  Sir  W.  Harcourt : — 

You  wish  me  to  say  what,  in  my  opinion,  would  be  the  effect 
of  the  total  suppression  of  experiments  on  living  animals  on  the 
progress  of  physiological  science  in  this  country. 

I  have  no  hesitation  in  replying  that  it  would  almost  entirely 
arrest  that  progress.  Indeed,  it  is  obvious  that  such  an  effect 
must  follow  the  measure,  for  a  man  can  no  more  develop  a  true 
conception  of  living  action  out  of  his  inner  consciousness  than 
he  can  that  of  a  camel.  Observation  and  experiment  alone  can 
give  us  a  real  foundation  for  any  kind  of  Natural  Knowledge, 
and  any  one  who  is  acquainted  with  the  history  of  science  is 
aware  that  not  a  single  one  of  all  the  great  truths  of  modern 
physiology  has  been  established  otherwise  than  by  experiment 
on  living  things. 

Happily  the  abolition  of  physiological  experiment  in  this 
country,  should  such  a  fatal  legislative  mistake  ever  be  made, 
will  be  powerless  to  arrest  the  progress  of  science  elsewhere. 
But  we  shall  import  our  physiology  as  we  do  our  hock  and  our 
claret  from  Germany  and  France;  those  of  our  young  physi- 
ologists and  pathologists  who  can  afford  to  travel  will  carry 
on  their  researches  in  Paris  and  in  Berlin,  where  they  will  be 
under  no  restraint  whatever,  or  it  may  be  that  the  foreign 
laboratories  will  carry  out  the  investigations  devised  here  by 
the  ffew  persons  who  have  the  courage,  in  spite  of  all  obstacles, 
to  attempt  to  save  British  science  from  extinction. 

I  doubt  if  such  a  result  will  contribute  to  the  diminution  of 
animal  suffering.  I  am  sure  that  it  will  do  as  much  harm  as  any- 
thing can  do  to  the  English  school  of  Physiology,  Pathology, 


468  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 

and  Pharmacology,  and  therefore  to  the  progress  of  rational 
medicine. 

Another  letter  on  the  subject  may  be  given,  which  was 
written  to  a  student  at  a  theological  college,  in  reply  to  a 
request  for  his  opinion  on  vivisection,  which  was  to  be  dis- 
cussed at  the  college  debating  society. 

Grand  Hotel,  Eastbourne,  Stpt.  29,  1890. 

Dear  Sir — I  am  of  the  opinion  that  the  practice  of  perform- 
ing experiments  on  living  animals  is  not  only  reconcilable  with 
true  humanity,  but  under  certain  circumstances  is  imperatively 
demanded  by  it. 

Experiments  on  living  animals  are  of  two  kinds.  First, 
those  which  are  made  upon  animals  which,  although  living,  are 
incapable  of  sensation,  in  consequence  of  the  destruction  or  the 
paralysis  of  the  sentient  machinery. 

I  am  not  aware  that  the  propriety  of  performing  experi- 
ments of  this  kind  is  seriously  questioned,  except  in  so  far  as 
they  may  involve  some  antecedent  or  subsequent  suffering.  Of 
course  those  who  deny  that  under  any  circumstances  it  can  be 
right  to  inflict  suffering  on  other  sentient  beings  for  our  own 
good,  must  object  to  even  this  much  of  what  they  call  cruelty. 
And  when  they  prove  their  sincerity  by  leaving  off  animal  food ; 
by  objecting  to  drive  castrated  horses,  or  indeed  to  employ  ani- 
mal labour  at  all;  and  by  refusing  to  destroy  rats,  mice,  fleas, 
bugs  and  other  sentient  vermin,  they  may  expect  sensible  people 
to  listen  to  them,  and  sincere  people  to  think  them  other  than 
sentimental  hypocrites. 

As  to  experiments  of  the  second  kind,  which  do  not  admit  of 
the  paralysis  of  the  sentient  mechanism,  and  the  performance  of 
which  involves  severe  prolonged  suffering  to  the  more  sensitive 
among  the  higher  animals,  I  should  be  sorry  to  make  any  sweep- 
ing assertion.  I  am  aware  of  a  strong  personal  dislike  to  them, 
which  tends  to  warp  my  judgment,  and  I  am  prepared  to  make 
any  allowance  for  those  who,  carried  away  by  still  more  intense 
dislike,  would  utterly  prohibit  these  experiments. 

But  it  has  been  my  duty  to  give  prolonged  and  careful  atten- 
tion to  this  subject,  and  putting  natural  sympathy  aside,  to  try 
and  get  at  the  rights  and  wrongs  of  the  business  from  a  higher 
point  of  view,  namely,  that  of  humanity,  which  is  often  very 
different  from  that  of  emotional  sentiment. 

I  ask  myself — suppose  you  knew  that  by  inflicting  prolonged 


i875  THE   PROTECTION   BILL  469 

pain  on  100  rabbits  you  could  discover  a  way  to  the  extirpation 
of  leprosy,  or  consumption,  or  locomotor  ataxy,  or  of  siccidal 
melancholia  among  human  beings,  dare  you  refuse  to  inflict 
that  pain?  Now  I  am  quite  unable  to  say  that  I  dare.  That 
sort  of  daring  would  seem  to  me  to  be  extreme  moral  cowardice, 
to  involve  gross  inconsistency. 

For  the  advantage  and  protection  of  society,  we  all  agree  to 
inflict  pain  upon  man — pain  of  the  most  prolonged  and  acute 
character — in  our  prisons,  and  on  our  battlefields.  If  England 
were  invaded,  we  should  have  no  hesitation  about  inflicting  the 
maximum  of  suffering  upon  our  invaders  for  no  other  object 
than  our  own  good. 

But  if  the  good  of  society  and  of  a  nation  is  a  sufficient  plea 
for  inflicting  pain  on  men,  I  think  it  may  suffice  us  for  experi- 
menting on  rabbits  or  dogs. 

At  the  same  time,  I  think  that  a  heavy  moral  respon- 
sibility rests  on  those  who  perform  experiments  of  the  second 
kind. 

The  wanton  infliction  of  pain  on  man  or  beast  is  a  crime; 
pity  is  that  so  many  of  those  who  (as  I  think  rightly)  hold  this 
view,  seem  to  forget  that  the  criminality  lies  in  the  wantonness 
and  not  in  the  act  of  inflicting  pain  per  se, — I  am,  sir,  yours 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

So  far  back  as  1870  a  committee  had  been  appointed  by 
the  British  Association,  and  reported  upon  the  conditions 
under  which  tl^^y  considered  experiments  on  living  animals 
justifiable.  In  the  early  spring  of  1875  ^  bill  to  regulate 
physiological  research  was  introduced  into  the  Upper  House 
by  Lord  Hartismere,  but  not  proceeded  with.  When  legis- 
lation seemed  imminent  Huxley,  in  concert  with  other  men 
of  science,  interested  himself  in  drawing  up  a  petition  to 
Parliament  to  direct  opinion  on  the  subject  and  provide  a 
fair  basis  for  future  legislation,  which  indeed  took  shape 
immediately  after  in  a  bill  introduced  by  Dr.  Lyon  Playfair 
(afterwards  Lord  Playfair),  Messrs.  Walpole  and  Ashley. 
This  bill,  though  more  just  to  science,  did  not  satisfy  many 
scientific  men,  and  was  withdrawn  upon  the  appointment  of 
a  Royal  Commission. 

The  following  letters  to  Mr.  Darwin  bear  on  this 
period : — 


470 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 


4  Marlborough  Place,  Jan.  22,  1875. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  quite  agree  with  your  letter  about  vivi- 
section as  a  matter  of  right  and  justice  in  the  first  place,  and 
secondly  as  the  best  method  of  taking  the  wind  out  of  the 
enemy's  sails.  I  will  communicate  with  Burdon  Sanderson  and 
see  what  can  be  done. 

My  reliance  as  against and  her  fanatical  following  is 

not  in  the  wisdom  and  justice  of  the  House  of  Commons,  but  in 
the  large  number  of  fox-hunters  therein.  If  physiological  ex- 
perimentation is  put  down  by  law,  hunting,  fishing  and  shooting, 
against  which  a  much  better  case  can  be  made  out,  will  soon 

follow. — Ever  yours,  very  faithfully,  t  tt  xj 

1 .  rl.  rlUXLEY. 

South  Kensington.  ApH/  21,  1875. 

My  dear  Darwin — The  day  before  yesterday  I  met  Playfair 
at  the  club,  and  he  told  me  that  he  had  heard  from  Miss  Elliott 
that  /  was  getting  up  what  she  called  a  "  Vivisector's  Bill;"  and 
that  Lord  Cardwell  was  very  anxious  to  talk  with  some  of  us 
about  the  matter. 

So  you  see  that  there  is  no  secret  about  our  proceedings.  I 
gave  him  a  general  idea  of  what  was  doing,  and  he  quite  con- 
firmed what  Lubbock  said  about  the  impossibility  of  any  action 
being  taken  in  Parliament  this  session. 

Playfair  said  he  should  like  very  much  to  know  what  we 
proposed  doing,  and  I  should  think  it  would  be  a  good  thing  to 
take  him  into  consultation. 

On  my  return  I  found  that  Pfluiger  had  seig  me  his  memoir 
with  a  note  such  as  he  had  sent  to  you. 

I  read  it  last  night,  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  it  is  a 
very  important  piece  of  work. 

He  shows  that  frogs  absolutely  deprived  of  oxygen  give  off 
carbonic  acid  for  twenty-five  hours,  and  gives  very  strong 
reasons  for  believing  that  the  evolution  of  carbonic  acid  by 
living  matter  in  general  is  the  result  of  a  process  of  internal 
rearrangement  of  the  molecules  of  the  living  matter,  and  not 
of  direct  oxidation. 

His  speculations  about  the  origin  of  living  matter  are  the 
best  I  have  seen  yet,  so  far  as  I  understand  them.  But  he 
plunges  into  the  depths  of  the  higher  chemistry  in  which  I  am 
by  no  means  at  home.  Only  this  I  can  see,  that  the  paper  is 
worth  careful  study. — Ever  yours  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 


i875  LETTERS  TO  DARWIN  471 

31  Royal  Terrace,  Edinburgh,  May  19,  1875. 

My  dear  Darwin — Playfair  has  sent  a  copy  of  his  bill  to 
me,  and  I  am  sorry  to  find  that  its  present  wording  is  such  as 
to  render  it  very  unacceptable  to  all  teachers  of  physiology.  In 
discussing  the  draft  with  Litchfield  I  recollect  that  I  insisted 
strongly  on  the  necessity  of  allowing  demonstrations  to  students, 
but  I  agreed  that  it  would  be  sufficient  to  permit  such  demon- 
strations only  as  could  be  performed  under  anaesthetics. 

The  second  clause  of  the  bill,  however,  by  the  words  "  for  the 
purpose  of  new  scientific  discovery  and  for  no  other  purpose,"  ab- 
solutely prohibits  any  kind  of  demonstration.  It  would  debar  me 
from  showing  the  circulation  in  the  web  of  a  frog's  foot  or  from 
exhibiting  the  pulsations  of  the  heart  in  a  decapitated  frog. 

And  by  its  secondary  effect  it  would  prohibit  discovery. 
Who  is  to  be  able  to  make  discoveries  unless  he  knows  of  his 
own  knowledge  what  has  been  already  made  out  ?  It  might 
as  well  be  ruled  that  a  chemical  student  should  begin  with 
organic  analysis. 

Surely  Burdon  Sanderson  did  not  see  the  draft  of  the  bill  as 
it  now  stands.  The  Professors  here  are  up  in  arms  about  it, 
and  as  the  papers  have  associated  my  name  with  the  bill  I  shall 
have  to  repudiate  it  publicly  unless  something  can  be  done.  But 
what  in  the  world  is  to  be  done?  I  have  not  written  to  Playfair 
yet,  and  shall  wait  to  hear  from  you  before  I  go.  I  have  an  ex- 
cellent class  here,  340  odd,  and  like  the  work.  Best  regards  to 
Mrs.  Darwin. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

31  Royal  Terrace,  Edinburgh,  June  5,  1875. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  see  I  have  forgotten  to  return  Play- 
fair's  letter,  which  I  inclose.  He  sent  me  a  copy  of  his  last  letter 
to  you,  but  it  did  not  reach  me  till  some  days  after  my  return 
from  London.  In  the  meanwhile  I  saw  him  and  Lord  Card- 
well  at  the  House  of  Commons  on  Friday  (last  week). 

Playfair  seems  rather  disgusted  at  our  pronunciamento 
against  the  bill,  and  he  declares  that  both  Sanderson  and 
Sharpey  assented  to  it.  What  they  were  dreaming  about  I  cannot 
imagine.  To  say  that  no  man  shall  experiment  except  for  purpose 
of  original  discovery  is  about  as  reasonable  as  to  ordain  that  no 
man  shall  swim  unless  he  means  to  go  from  Dover  to  Calais. 

However  the  Commission  is  to  be  issued,  and  it  is  everything 
to  gain  time  and  let  the  present  madness  subside  a  little.     I 
vowed  I  would  never  be  a  member  of  another  Commission  if  I 
could  help  it,  but  I  suppose  I  shall  have  to  serve  on  this. 
31 


472 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 


I  am  very  busy  with  my  lectures,  and  am  nearly  half 
through.  I  shall  not  be  sorry  when  they  are  over,  as  I  have  been 
grinding  away  now  since  last  October. — ^With  kindest  regards 
to  Mrs.  Darwin,  ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

He  was  duly  asked  to  serve  on  the  Commission.  Though 
his  lectures  in  Edinburgh  prevented  him  from  attending^ 
till  the  end  of  July  no  difficulty  was  made  over  this,  as  the 
first  meetings  of  the  Comaiission,-which  began  on  June  30, 
were  to  be  devoted  to  taking  the  less  controversial  evidence. 
In  accepting  his  nomination  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Cross  (after- 
wards Lord  Cross),  at  that  time  Home  Secretary : — 

If  I  can  be  of  any  service  I  shall  be  very  glad  to  act  on  the 
Commission,  sympathising  as  I  do  on  the  one  hand  with  those 
who  abhor  cruelty  to  animals,  and,  on  the  other,  with  those  who 
abhor  the  still  greater  cruelty  to  man  which  is  involved  in  any 
attempt  to  arrest  the  progress  of  physiology  and  of  rational 
medicine. 

The.  other  members  of  the  Commission  were  Lords 
Cardwell  and  Winmarleigh,  Mr.  W.  E.  Forster,  Sir  J.  B. 
Karslake,  Professor  Erichssen,  and  Mr.  R.  H.  Hutton. 

The  evidence  given  before  the  Commission  bore  out  the 
view  that  English  physiologists  inflicted  no  more  pain  upon 
animals  than  could  be  avoided;  but  one  witness,  not  an 
Englishman,  and  not  having  at  that  time  a  perfect  command 
of  the  English  language,  made  statements  which  appeared 
to  the  Commission  at  least  to  indicate  that  the  witness  was 
indifferent  to  animal  suffering.  Of  this  incident  Huxley 
writes  to  Mr.  Darwin  at  the  same  time  as  he  forwarded  a 
formal  invitation  for  him  to  appear  as  a  witness  before  the 
Commission : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Oct  30,  1875. 

My  dear  Darwin— The.indosed  tells  its  own  story.  I  have 
done  my  best  to  prevent  your  being  bothered,  but  for  various 
reasons  which  will  occur  to  you  I  did  not  like  to  appear  too 
obstructive,  and  I  was  asked  to  write  to  you.  The  strong  feeling 
of  my  colleagues  (and  my  own  I  must  say  also)  is  that  we  ought 
to  have  your  opinions  in  our  minutes.  At  the  same  time  there  is  a 
no  less  strong  desire  to  trouble  you  as  little  as  possible,  and  under 
no  circumstances  to  cause  you  any  risk  of  injury  to  health. 


1875  VIVISECTION   COMMISSION  473 

What  with  occupation  of  time,  worry  and  vexation,  this 
horrid  Commission  is  playing  the  deuce  with  me.  I  have  felt 
it  my  duty  to  act  as  counsel  for  Science,  and  was  well  satisfied 
with  the  way  things  were  going.    But  on  Thursday  when  I  was 

absent  at  the  Council  of  the  Royal  Society was  examined, 

and  if  what  I  hear  is  a  correct  account  of  the  evidence  he  gave 
I  may  as  well  throw  up  my  brief. 

I  am  told  that  he  openly  professed  the  most  entire  indiffer- 
ence to  animal  suffering,  and  said  he  only  gave  anaesthetics  to 
keep  animals  quiet ! 

I  declare  to  you  I  did  not  believe  the  man  lived  who  was 
such  an  unmitigated  cynical  bnjte  as  to  profess  and  act  upon 
such  principles,  and  I  would  willingly  agree  to  any  law  which 
would  send  him  to  the  treadmill. 

The  impression  his  evidence  made  on  Cardwell  and  Forster 
is  profound,  and  I  am  powerless  (even  if  I  had  the  desire  which 
I  have  not)  to  combat  it.  He  has  done  more  mischief  than  all 
the  fanatics  put  together. 

I  am  utterly  disgusted  with  the  whole  business. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Of  course  keep  the  little  article  on  Species.  It  is  in  some* 
American  Encyclopaedia  published  by  Appleton.  And  best 
thanks  for  your  book.  I  shall  study  it  some  day,  and  value  it  as 
I  do  every  line  you  have  written.  Don't  mention  what  I  have 
told  you  outside  the  circle  of  discreet  Darwindom. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Nov.  2,  1875. 

My  dear  Darwin — Our  secretary  has  telegraphed  to  you  to 
Down,  and  written  to  Queen  Anne  Street. 

But  to  make  sure,  I  send  this  note  to  say  that  we  expect  you 
at  13  Delahay  Street  *  at  2  o'clock  to-morrow.  And  that  I  have 
looked  out  the  highest  chair  that  was  to  be  got  for  you.f — Ever 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  Commission  reported  early  in  1876,  and  a  few 
months  after  Lord  Carnarvon  introduced  a  bill  intituled 
"  An  ^ct  to  amend  the  law  relating  to  Cruelty  to  Animals." 
It  was  a  more  drastic  measure  than  was  demanded.  As  a 
writer  in  Nature  (1876,  p.  248)  puts  it :  "  The  evidence  on 

♦  Where  the  Commission  was  sitting. 

t  Mr.  Darwin  was  long  in  the  leg.  When  he  came  to  our  house 
the  biggest  hassock  was  always  placed  in  an  arm-chair  to  give  it  th/ 
requisite  height  for  him. 


474  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxix 

the  Strength  of  which  legislation  was  recommended  went 
beyond  the  facts,  the  report  went  beyond  the  evidence,  the 
recommendations  beyond  the  report,  and  the  bill  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  gone  beyond  the  recommendations,  but 
rather  to  have  contradicted  them." 

As  to  the  working  of  the  law  Huxley  referred  to  it  the 
following  year  in  the  address,  already  cited,  on  "  Elementary 
Instruction  in  Physiology"  (Coll.  Essays,  iii.  310). 

But  while  I  should  object  to  any  experimentation  which  can 
justly  be  called  painful,  and  while  as  a  member  of  a  late  Royal 
Commission  I  did  my  best  to  prevent  the  infliction  of  needless 
pain  for  any  purpose,  I  think  it  is  my  duty  to  take  this  oppor- 
tunity of  expressing  my  regret  at  a  condition  of  the  law  which 
permits  a  boy  to  troll  for  pike  or  set  lines  with  live  frog  bait 
for  idle  amusement,  and  at  the  same  time  lays  die  teacher  of 
that  boy  open  to  the  penalty  of  fine  and  imprisonment  if  he  uses 
the  same  animal  for  the  purpose  of  exhibiting  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  instructive  of  physiological  spectacles — the  cir- 
culation in  the  web  of  the  foot  No  one  could  undertake  to 
affirm  that  a  frog  is  not  inconvenienced  by  being  wrapped  up 
in  a  wet  rag  and  having  his  toes  tied  out,  and  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  inconvenience  is  a  sort  of  pain.  But  you  must  not  inflict 
the  least  pain  on  a  vertebrated  animal  for  scientific  purposes 
(diough  you  may  do  a  good  deal  in  that  way  for  gain  or  for 
sport)  without  due  licence  of  the  Secretary  of  State  for  the 
Home  Department,  granted  under  the  authority  of  the  Vivi- 
section Act. 

So  it  comes  about  that,  in  this  year  of  grace  1877,  two  per- 
sons may  be  charged  with  cruelty  to  animals.  One  has  impaled 
a  frog,  and  suffered  the  creature  to  writhe  about  in  that  con- 
dition for  hours ;  the  other  has  pained  the  animal  no  more  than 
one  of  us  would  be  pained  by  tying  strings  round  his  fingers 
and  keeping  him  in  the  position  of  a  hydropathic  patient.  The 
first  offender  says,  "  I  did  it  because  I  find  fishing  very  amus- 
ing," and  the  magistrate  bids  him  depart  in  peace — nay,  probably 
wishes  him  good  sport.  The  second  pleads,  "  I  wanted  to  im- 
press a  scientific  truth  with  a  distinctness  attainable  in  no 
other  way  on  the  minds  of  my  scholars/'  and  die  magistrate 
fines  him  five  pounds. 

I  cannot  but  think  that  this  is  an  anomalous  and  not  wholly 
creditable  state  of  things. 


CHAPTER   XXX 
1875-1876 

Huxley  only  delivered  one  address  outside  his  regular 
work  in  1875,  on  "  Some  Results  of  the  '  Challenger '  Ex- 
pedition," given  at  the  Royal  Institution  on  January  29. 
For  all  through  the  summer  he  was  away  from  London, 
engaged  upon  the  summer  course  of  lectures  on  Natural 
History  at  Edinburgh.  This  was  due  to  the  fact  that  Pro- 
fessor (afterwards  Sir)  Wyville  Thomson  was  still  absent 
on  the  Challenger  expedition,  and  Professor  Victor  Cams, 
who  had  acted  as  his  substitute  before,  was  no  longer 
.  available.  Under  these  circumstances  the  Treasury  granted 
Huxley  leave  of  absence  from  South  Kensington.  His 
course  began  on  May  3,  and  ended  on  July  23,  and  he 
thought  it  a  considerable  feat  to  deal  with  the  whole  Ani- 
mal Kingdom  in  54  lectures.  No  doubt  both  he  and  his 
students  worked  at  high  pressure,  especially  when  the  latter 
came  scantily  prepared  for  the  task,  Uke  the  late  Joseph 
Thomson,  afterwards  distinguished  as  an  African  traveller, 
who  has  left  an  account  of  his  experience  in  this  class. 
Thomson's  particular  weak  point  was  his  Greek,  and  the 
terminology  of  the  lectures  seems  to  have  been  a  thorn  in 
his  side.  This  account,  which  actually  tells  of  the  1876 
course,  occurs  on  pp.  36  and  37  of  his  "  Life." 

The  experience  of  studying  personally  under  Huxley  was  a 
privilege  to  which  he  had  been  looking  forward  with  eager 
anticipation ;  for  he  had  already  been  fascinated  with  the  charm 
of  Huxley's  writings,  and  had  received  from  them  no  small 
amount  of  mental  stimulus.     Nor  were  his  expectations  disap- 

475 


476  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxx 

pointed.  But  he  found  the  work  to  be  unexpectedly  hard,  and 
very  soon  he  had  the  sense  of  panting  to  keep  pace  with  the 
demands  of  the  lecturer.  It  was  not  merely  that  the  texture  of 
scientific  reasoning  in  the  lectures  was  so  closely  knit, — although 
that  was  a  very  palpable  fact, — but  the  character  of  Huxley's 
terminology  was  entirely  strange  to  him.  It  met  him  on  his 
weakest  side,  for  it  presupposed  a  knowledge  of  Greek  (being 
little  else  than  Greek  compounds  with  English  terminations) 
and  of  Greek  he  had  none. 

Huxley's  usual  lectures,  he  writes,  are  something  awful  to 
listen  to.  One  half  of  the  class,  which  numbers  about  four  hun- 
dred, have  given  up'  in  despair  from  sheer  inability  to  follow 
him.  The  strain  on  the  attention  of  each  lecture  is  so  great  as 
to  be  equal  to  any  ordinary  day's  work.  I  feel  quite  exhausted 
after  them.  And  then  to  master  his  language  is  something 
dreadful.  But,  with  all  these  drawbacks,  I  would  not  miss  them, 
even  if  they  were  ten  times  as  difficult.  They  are  something" 
glorious,  sublime ! 

Again  he  writes : — 

Huxley  is  still  very  difficult  to  follow,  and  I  have  been  four 
times  in  his  lectures  completely  stuck  and  utterly  helpless.  But 
he  has  given  us  eight  or  nine  beautiful  lectures  on  the  frog.  .  .  . 
If  you  only  heard  a  few  of  the  lectures  you  would  be  surprised 
to  find  that  there  were  so  few  missing  links  in  the  chain  of  life, 
from  the  amoeba  to  the  genus  homo. 

It  was  a  large  class,  ultimately  reaching  353  and  break- 
ing the  record  of  the  Edinburgh  classes  without  having 
recourse  to  the  factitious  assistance  proposed  in  the  letter 
of  May  16. 

His  inaugural  lecture  was  delivered  under  what  ought 
to  have  been  rather  trying  circumstances.  On  the  way 
from  London  he  stopped  a  night  with  his  old  friends,  John 
Bruce  and  his  wife  (one  of  the  Fannings),  at  their  home, 
Barmoor  Castle,  near  Beal.  He  had  to  leave  at  6  next 
morning,  reaching  Edinburgh  at  10,  and  lecturing  at  2. 
"  Nothing,"  he  writes,  "  could  be  much  worse,  but  I  am 
going  through  it  with  all  the  cheerfulness  of  a  Christian 
martyr." 

On  May  3  he  writes  to  his  wife  from  the  Bruces'  Edin- 
burgh house,  which  they  had  lent  him. 


i875  HIS  EDINBURGH   COURSE  477 

I  know  that  you  will  be  dying  to  hear  how  my  lecture  went 
oflF  to-day — so  I  sit  down  to  send  you  a  line,  though  you  did 
hear  from  me  to-day. 

The  theatre  was  crammed.  I  am  told  there  were  600  audi- 
tors, and  I  could  not  have  wished  for  more  thorough  attention. 
But  I  had  to  lecture  in  gown  and  Doctor's  hood  and  the  heat 
was  awful.  The  Principal  and  the  chief  Professors  were  pres- 
ent, and  altogether  it  was  a  state  affair.  I  was  in  great  force, 
although  I  did  get  up  at  six  this  morning  and  travelled  all  the 
•way  from  Barmoor.  But  I  won't  do  that  sort  of  thing  again,  it's 
tempting  Providence. 

May  5. — Fanny  and  her  sisters  and  the  Governess  flit  to 
Barmoor  to-day  and  I  shall  be  alone  in  my  glory.  I  shall  be 
very  comfortable  and  well  cared  for,  so  make  your  mind  easy, 
and  if  I  fall  ill  I  am  to  send  for  Qark.  He  expressly  told  me  to 
do  so  as  I  left  him ! 

I  gave  my  second  lecture  yesterday  to  an  audience  filling 
the  theatre.  The  reason  of  this  is  that  everybody  who  likes — 
comes  for  the  first  week  and  then  only  those  who  have  tickets 
are  admitted.  How  many  will  become  regular  students  I  don't 
know  yet,  but  there  is  promise  of  a  big  class.  The  Lord  send 
three  extra — ^to  make  up  for  ...  (a  sudden  claim  upon  his 
purse  before  he  left  home). 

And  he  writes  of  this  custom  to  Professor  Baynes  on 
June  12: — 

My  class  is  over  350  and  I  find  some  good  working  material 
among  them.  Parsons  mustered  strong  in  the  first  week,  but 
I  fear  they  came  to  curse  and  didn't  remain  to  pay. 

He  was  still  Lord  Rector  of  Aberdeen  University,  and 
on  May  10  writes  how  he  attended  a  business  meeting 
there : — 

I  have  had  my  run  to  Aberdeen  and  back — got  up  at  5, 
started  from  Edinburgh  at  6.25,  attended  the  meeting  of  the 
Court  at  I.  Then  drove  out  with  Webster  to  Edgehill  in  a  great 
storm  of  rain  and  was  received  with  their  usual  kindness.  I 
did  not  get  back  till  near  8  o'clock  last  night  and,  thanks  to  The 
Virginians  and  a  good  deal  of  Virginia,  I  passed  the  time  pleas- 
antly enough.  .  .  .  There  are  270  tickets  gone  up  to  this  date, 
so  I  suppose  I  may  expect  a  class  of  300  men.  300  X  4  =  1200. 
Hooray. 


478  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxx 

To  HIS  Eldest  Daughter 

Edinburgh,  May  i6,  1875. 

My  dearest  Jess — Your  mother's  letter  received  this  morn- 
ing reminds  me  that  I  have  not  written  to  "Cordelia"  (I  sup- 
pose she  means  Goneril)  by  a  message  from  that  young  person 
f  — so  here  is  reparation. 

y  I  have  330  students,  and  my  class  is  the  biggest  in  the  Uni- 

versity— ^but  I  am  quite  cast  down  and  discontented  because  it  I 
is  not  351, — being  one  more  than  the  Botany  Class  last  year —  ' 
which  was  never  so  big  before  or  since. 

I  am  thinking  of  paying  21  street  boys  to  come  and  take  the 
extra  tickets  so  that  I  may  crow  over  all  my  colleagues. 

Fanny  Bruce  is  going  to  town  next  week  to  her  grand- 
mother's and  I  want  you  girls  to  make  friends  with  her.  It 
seems  to  me  that  she  is  very  nice — ^but  that  is  only  a  fallible 
man's  judgment,  and  Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  attempt  to, 
forestall  Miss  Cudberry's  decision  on  such  a  question.  Anyhow 
she  has  plenty  of  energy  and,  among  other  things,  works  very 
hard  at  German, 

M says  that  the  Rootle-Tootles  have  a  bigger  drawing- 
room  than  ours.  I  should  be  sorry  to  believe  these  young  be- 
ginners guilty  of  so  much  presumption,  and  perhaps  you  will 
tell  them  to  have  it  made  smaller  before  I  visit  them. 

A  Scotch  gentleman  has  just  been  telling  me  that  May  is  the 
worst  month  in  the  year,  here;. so  pleasant!  but  the  air  is  soft 
and  warm  to-day,  and  I  look  out  over  the  foliage  to  the  casUe 
and  don't  care. 

Love  to  all,  and  specially  M .    Mind  you  don't  tell  her 

that  I  dine  out  to-day  and  to-morrow — ^positively  for  the  first 
and  last  times. — Ever  your  loving  father, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

However,  the  class  grew  without  such  adventitious  aid,^ 
and  he  writes  to  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  on  June  15: — 

...  I  have  a  class  of  353,  and  instruct  them  in  dry  facts — 
-  particularly  warning  them  to  keep  free  of  the  infidel  specula- 

tions which  are  current  under  the  name  of  evolution. 

I  expect  an  "  examiner's  call "  from  a  Presbytery  before  the 
course  is  over,  but  I  am  afraid  that  the  pay  is  not  enough  to 
induce  me  to  forsake  my  "larger  sphere  of  influence"  in 
London, 


i875  LETTERS  479 

In  the  same  letter  he  speaks  of  a  flying  visit  to  town 
which  he  was  about  to  make  on  the  following  Thursday, 
returning  on  the  Saturday  for  lack  of  a  good  Sunday  train : 

Mayhap  I  may  chance  to  see  you  at  the  club— but  I  shall 
be  torn  to  pieces  with  things  to  do  during  my  two  days'  stay. 

If  Moses  had  not  existed  I  should  have  had  three  days  in 
town,  which  is  a  curious  concatenation  of  circumstances. 

As  for  his  health  during  this  period,  it  maintained,  on 
the  whole,  a  satisfactory  level,  thanks  to  the  regime  of  which 
he  writes  to  Professor  Baynes : 

I  am  very  sorry  to  hear  that  you  have  been  so  seriously  ill. 
You  will  have  to  take  to  my  way  of  living — a  mutton  chop  a 
day  and  no  grog,  but  much  baccy.  .  Don't  begin  to  pick  up  your 
threads  too  fast. 

No  wonder  you  are  uneasy  if  you  have  crah%  on  your  con- 
science.*   Thank  Heaven  they  are  not  on  mine  I 

I  am  glad  to  hear  you  are  getting  better,  and  I  sincerely 
trust  that  you  may  find  all  the  good  you  seek  in  the  baths. 

As  to  coming  back  a  "new  man,"  who  knows  what  that 
might  be?  Let  us  rather  hope  for  the  old  man  in  a  state  of 
complete  repair — Ai  copper  bottomed. 

Excuse  my  nautical  language. 

The  following  letters  also  touch  on  his  Edinburgh  lec- 
tures : — 

CRAGsms,  Morpeth,  August  11,  1875. 

My  dear  Foster — We  are  staying  here  with  Sir  W.  Arm- 
strong— the  whole  brood.  Miss  Matthaei  and  the  majority  of 
the  chickens  being  camped  at  a  farm-house  belonging  to  our 
host  about  three  miles  off.  It  is  wetter  than  it  need  be,  other- 
wise we  are  very  jolly. 

I  finished  off  my  work  in  Edinburgh  on  the  23rd  and  posi- 
tively polished  off  the  Animal  Kingdom  in  54  lectures.  French 
without  a  master  in  twelve  lessons  is  nothing  to  this  feat.  The 
men  worked  very  well  on  the  whole,  and  sent  in  some  creditable 
examination  papers.  I  stayed  a  few  days  to  finish  up  the  ab- 
stracts of  my  lectures  for  the  Medical  Times;  then  picked  up 
the  two  elder  girls  who  were  at  Barmoor  and  brought  them  on 
here  to  join  the  wife  and  the  rest. 

*  i,e,  an  article  for  the  Encyclopadia  Britannica. 


48o  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxx 

How  is  it  that  Dohrn  has  been  and  gone?  I  have  been 
meditating  a  letter  to  him  for  an  age.  He  wanted  to  see  me, 
and  I  did  not  know  how  to  manage  to  bring  about  a  meeting. 

Edinburgh  is  greatly  exercised  in  its  mind  about  the  vivi- 
section business,  and  "  Vagus  "  "  swells  wisibly  "  whenever  the 
subject  is  mentioned.  I  think  there  is  an  inclination  to  reg-ard 
those  who  are  ready  to  consent  to  legislation  of  any  kind  as 
traitors,  or,  at  any  rate,  trimmers.  It  sickens  me  to  reflect  on 
the  quantity  of  time  and  worry  I  shall  have  to  give  to  that  sub- 
ject when  I  get  back. 

I  see  that has  been  blowing  the  trumpet  at  the  Medical 

Association.    He  has  about  as  much  tact  as  a  flyblown  bull. 

I  have  just  had  a  long  letter  from  Wyville  Thomson.  The 
Challenger  inclines  to  think  that  Bathybius  is  a  mineral  precipi- 
tate! in  which  case  some  enemy  will  probably  say  that  it  is  a 
product  of  my  precipitation.  So  mind,  I  was  the  first  to  make 
that  "  goak."  Old  Ehrenberg  suggested  something  of  the  kind 
to  me,  but  I  have  not  his  letter  here.  I  shall  eat  my  leek  hand- 
somely, if  any  eating  has  to  be  done.  They  have  found  pseudo- 
podia  in  Glohigerina, 

With  all  good  wishes  from  ours  to  yours — Ever  yours  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

Cragside,  Morpeth,  August  13,  1875. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  find  that  in  the  midst  of  my  work  in 
Edinburgh  I  omitted  to  write  to  De  Vrij,  so  I  have  just  sent  him 
a  letter  expressing  my  pleasure  in  being  able  to  co-operate  in 
any  plan  for  doing  honour  to  old  Benedict,*  for  whom  I  have 
a  most  especial  respect. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  won't  write  something  about  him  to 
stir  up  the  Philistines. 

My  work  at  Edinburgh  got  itself  done  very  satisfactorily, 
and  I  cleared  about  £1000  by  the  transaction,  being  one  of  the 
few  examples  known  of  a  Southern  coming  north  and  pillaging 
the  Scots.  However,  I  was  not  sorry  when  it  was  all  over,  as 
I  had  been  hard  at  work  since  October  and  began  to  get  tired. 

The  wife  and  babies  from  the  south,  and  I  from  the  north, 
met  here  a  fortnight  ago  and  we  have  been  idling  very  pleasantly 
ever  since.  The  place  is  very  pretty  and  our  host  kindness 
itself.  Miss  Matthaei  and  fivt  of  the  bairns  are  at  Cartington — 
a  moorland  farm-house  three  miles  off — and  in  point  of  rosy 

*  Spinoza,  a  memorial  to  whom  was  being  raised  in  Holland. 


i875  LETTERS  48 1 

cheeks  and  appetites  might  compete  with  any  five  children  of 
their  age  and  weight.  Jess  and  Mady  are  here  with  us  and 
have  been  doing  great  execution  at  a  ball  at  Newcastle.  I 
really  don't  know  myself  when  I  look  at  these  young  women, 
and  my  hatred  of  possible  sons-in-law  is  deadly.  All  send  their 
love. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Wish  you  joy  of  Bristol. 

The  following  letter  to  Darwin  was  written  when  the 
Polar  Expedition  under  Sir  George  Nares  was  in  prepara- 
tion. It  illustrates  the  range  of  observation  which  his  friends 
had  learned  to  expect  in  him : — 

AxHENiEUM  Clu^,  Jan,  22,  1875. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  write  on  behalf  of  the  Polar  Com- 
mittee of  the  Royal  Society  to  ask  for  any  suggestions  you  may 
be  inclined  to  offer  us  as  instructions  to  the  naturalists  who  are 
to  accompany  the  new  expedition. 

The  task  of  drawing  up  detailed  instructions  is  divided 
among  a  lot  of  us ;  but  you  are  as  full  of  ideas  as  an  t^'g  is  full 
of  meat,  and  are  shrewdly  suspected  of  having,  somewhere 
in  your  capacious  cranium,  a  store  of  notions  which  would  be 
of  great  value  to  the  naturalists. 

All  I  can  say  is,  that  if  you  have  not  already  "collated 
facts  "  on  this  topic,  it  will  be  the  first  subject  I  ever  suggested 
to  you  on  which  you  had  not. 

Of  course  we  do  not  expect  you  to  put  yourself  to  any  great 
trouble — ^nor  ask  for  such  a  thing — ^but  if  you  will  jot  down  any 
notes  that  occur  to  you  we  shall  be  thankful. 

We  must  have  everything  in  hand  for  printing  by  March  15. 
— Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

The  following  letter  dates  from  soon  after  the  death  of 
Charles  Kingsley : — 

Science  Schools,  S.  Kensington,  Oct,  22,  1875. 

Dear  Miss  Kingsley — I  sincerely  trust  that  you  believe  I 
have  been  abroad  and  prostrated  by  illness,  and  have  thereby 
accounted  for  receiving  no  reply  to  your  letter  of  a  fortnight 
back. 

The  fact  is  that  it  has  only  just  reached  me,  owing  to  the 
neglect  of  the  people  in  Jermyn  Street,  who  ought  to  have  sent 
it  on  here. 


482  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxx 

I  assure  you  I  have  not  forgotten  the  brief  interview  to 
which  you  refer,  and  I  have  often  regretted  that  the  hurry  and 
worry  of  life  (which  increases  with  the  square  of  your  distance 
from  youth)  never  allowed  me  to  take  advantage  of  your  kind 
father's  invitation  to  become  better  acquainted  with  him  and 
his.  I  found  his  card  in  Jermyn  Street  when  I  returned  last 
year,  with  a  pencilled  request  that  I  would  call  on  him  at  West- 
minster. 

I  meant  to  do  so,  but  the  whirl  of  things  delayed  me  until, 
as  I  bitterly  regret,  it  was  too  late. 

I  am  not  sure  that  I  have  any  important  letter  of  your 
father's  but  one,  written  to  me  some  fifteen  years  ago,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  death  of  a  child  who  was  then  my  only  son.  It 
was  in  reply  to  a  letter  of  my  own  written  in  a  humour  of 
savage  grief.  Most  likely  he  burned  the  letter,  and  his  reply 
would  be  hardly  intelligible  without  it.  Moreover,  I  am  not  at 
all  sure  that  I  can  lay  my  hands  upon  your  father's  letter  in  a 
certain  chaos  of  papers  which  I  have  never  had  the  courage  to 
face  for  years.    But  if  you  wish  I  will  try. 

I  am  very  grieved  to  hear  of  Mrs.  Kingsley's  indisposition. 
Pray  make  my  kindest  remembrances  to  her,  and  believe  me 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

PS. — By  the  way,  letters  addressed  to  my  private  residence, 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W., 

are  sure  not  to  be  delayed.  And  I  have  another  reason  for 
giving  the  address — ^the  hope  that  when  you  come  to  Town 
you  will  let  my  wife  and  daughters  make  your  acquaintance. 

His  continued  interest  in  the  germ -theory  and  the  ques- 
tion of  the  origin  of  life  (Address  at  the  British  Association, 
1870,  see  p.  355,  sq,),  appears  from  the  following : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Ocf.  15,  1875. 
My  dear  Tyndall — Will  you  bring  with  you  to  the  x  to- 
morrow a  little  bottle  full  of  fluid  containing  the  bacteria  you 
have  found  developed  in  your  infusions?  I  mean  a  good  char- 
acteristic specimen.  It  will  be  useful  to  you,  I  think,  if  I  de- 
termine the  forms  with  my  own  microscope,  and  make  drawing^ 
of  them  which  you  can  use. — Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 
I  can't  tell  you  how  delighted  I  was  with  the  experiments. 


i875  LETTERS  TO   BAYNES  483 

Throughout  this  period,  and  for  some  time  later,  he  was 
in  frequent  communication  with  Thomas  Spencer  Baynes, 
Professor  of  Logic  and  English  Literature  at  St.  Andrews 
University,  the  editor  of  the  new  Encyclopcedia  Britannica, 
work  upon  which  was  begun  at  the  end  of  1873.  From  the 
first  Huxley  was  an  active  helper,  both  in  classifying  the 
biological  subjects  which  ought  to  be  treated  of,  suggesting 
the  right  men  to  undertake  the  work,  and  himself  writing 
several  articles,  notably  that  on  Evolution.* 

Extracts  from  his  letters  to  Professor  Baynes  between 
the  years  1873  and  1884,  serve  to  illustrate  the  work  which 
he  did  and  the  relations  he  maintained  with  the  genial  and 
learned  editor. 

Nov.  2,  1873. — I  have  been  spending  my  Sunday  morning  in 
drawing  up  a  list  of  headings,  which  will  I  think  exhaust  biology 
from  the  Animal  point  of  view,  and  each  of  which  does  not  in- 
volve more  than  you  are  likely  to  get  from  one  man.  In  many 
cases,  i,e.  Insecta,  Entomology^  I  have  subdivided  the  subjects, 
because,  by  an  unlucky  peculiarity  of  workers  in  these  subjects, 
men  who  understand  zoology  from  its  systematic  side  are  often 
ignorant  of  anatomy,  and  those  who  ktlOw  fossils  are  often  weak 
in  recent  forms. 

But  of  course  the  subdivision  does  not  imply  that  one  man 
should  not  take  the  whole  if  he  is  competent  to  do  so.  And  if 
separate  contributors  supply  articles  on  these  several  subdivi- 
sions, somebody  must  see  that  they  work  in  harmony. 

But  with  all  the  good  will  in  the  world,  he  was  too  hard 
pressed  to  get  his  quota  done  as  quickly  as  he  wished.  He 
suggests  at  once  that  "  Hydrozoa "  and  "  Actinozoa,"  in 
his  list,  should  be  dealt  with  by  the  writer  of  the  article 
"  Coelenterata." 

Shunting  "Actinozoa"  to  "  Coelenterata "  would  do  no 
harm,  and  would  have  the  great  merit  of  letting  me  breathe  a 
little.  But  if  you  think  better  that  "  Actinozoa  "  should  come 
in  its  place  under  A,  I  will  try  what  I  can  do. 

December  30,  1873. — As  to  Anthropology,  I  really  am  afraid 
to  promise.    At  present  I  am  plunged  in  Amphibia,  doing  a  lot 

*  Others  were  Actinozoa,  Amphibia,  Animal  Kingdom,  and  Biology. 


484  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxx 

of  original  work  to  settle  questions  which  have  been  hanging 
vaguely  in  my  mind  for  years.  If  Amphibia  is  done  by  the  end 
of  January  it  is  as  much  as  it  will  be. 

In  February  I  must  give  myself — or  at  any  rate  my  spare 
self — up  to  my  Rectorial  Address,*  which  (tell  it  not  in  Gath) 
I  wish  at  the  bottom  of  the  Red  Sea.  And  I  do  not  suppose 
I  shall  be  able  to  look  seriously  at  either  Animal  Kingdom  or 
Anthropology  before  the  address  is  done  with.  And  all  depends 
on  the  centre  of  my  microcosm — intestinum  colon — which  plays 
me  a  trick  every  now  and  then. 

I  will  do  what  I  can  if  you  like,  but  if  you  trust  me  it  is 
at  your  proper  peril. 

Feb.  8,  1874. — How  astonished  folks  will  be  if  eloquent  pas- 
sages out  of  the  address  get  among  the  Amphibia,  and  comments 
on  Frog  anatomy  into  the  address.  As  I  am  working  at  both 
just  now  this  result  is  not  improbable. 

Meanwhile  the  address  and  the  ten  days'  stay  at  Aber- 
deen had  been  "  playing  havoc  with  the  Amphibia/'  but  on 
returning  home,  he  went  to  work  upon  the  latter,  and 
writes  on  March  12 : — 

I  did  not  care  to  answer  your  last  letter  until  I  had  an  instal- 
ment of  Amphibia  ready.  Said  instalment  was  sent  off  to  you, 
care  of  Messrs.  Black,  yesterday,  and  now  I  feel  like  Dick 
Swiveller,  when  happy  circumstances  having  enabled  him  to 
pay  off  an  old  score  he  was  able  to  begin  running  up  another. 

June  8. — I  have  had  sundry  proofs  and  returned  them.  My 
writing  is  lamentable  when  I  am  in  a  hurry,  but  I  never  pro- 
voked a  strike  before !  I  declare  I  think  I  write  as  well  as  the 
editor,  on  ordinary  occasions. 

He  was  pleased  to  find  someone  who  wrote  as  badly  as, 
or  worse  than,  himself,  and  several  times  rallies  Baynes  on 
that  score.  Thus,  when  Mrs.  Baynes  had  acted  as  her 
husband's  amanuensis,  he  writes  (February  11,  1878): — 

My  respectful  compliments  to  the  "mere  machine,"  whose 
beautiful  caligraphy  (if  that  isn't  a  tautology)  leaves  no  doubt 
in  my  mind  that  whether  the  writing  of  your  letters  by  that 
agency  is  good  for  you  or  not  it  is  admirable  for  your  corre- 
spondents. 

Why  people  can't  write  a  plain  legible  hand  I  can't  imagine.* 

*  His  Rectoria^Address  at  Aberdeen.     (Sec  p.  436.) 

t  JV'.B, — Thisi  sentence  is  written  purposely  in  a  most  illegible  hand. 


i875  LETTERS  TO   BAYNES  485 

And  on  another  occasion  he  adds  a  postscript  to  say, 
"  You  write  worse  than  ever.    So  do  I." 

However,  the  article  got  finished  in  course  of  time : — 

^^S'  5- — I  hsL\t  seen  and  done  with  all  Amphibia  but  the 
last  sheet,  and  that  only  waits  revise.  Considering  it  was  to  be 
done  in  May,  I  think  I  am  pretty  punctual. 

The  next  year,  immediately  before  taking  Sir  Wyville 
Thomson's  lectures  at  Edinburgh,  he  writes  about  another 
article  which  he  had  in  hand : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  March  16,  1875. 

My  dear  Baynes — I  am  working  against  time  to  get  a  lot  of 
things  done — amongst  others  BIOLOGY — ^before  I  go  north. 
I  have  written  a  large  part  of  said  article,  and  it  would  facilitate 
my  operation  immensely  if  what  is  done  were  set  up  and  I  had 
two  or  three  proofs,  one  for  Dyer,  who  is  to  do  part  of  the 
article. 

Now,  if  I  send  the  MS.  to  North  Bridge  will  you  swear  by 
your  gods  (o — i — 3 — i  or  any  greater  number  as  the  case  may 
be)  that  I  shall  have  a  proof  swiftly  and  not  be  kept  waiting  for 
veeks  till  the  whole  thing  has  got  cold,  and  I  am  at  something 
else  a  hundred  miles  away  from  Biology  ? 

If  not  I  will  keep  the  MS.  till  it  is  all  done,  and  you  know 
what  that  means. — Ever  yours  very  truly, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Cragside,  Morpeth,  Aug.  12,  1875. 

My  dear  Baynes — The  remainder  of  the  proof  of  "  Biol- 
ogy "  is  posted  to-day — ^**  Praise  de  Lor'." 

I  have  a  dim  recollection  of  having  been  led  by  your  soft 
and  insinuating  ways  to  say  that  I  would  think  (only  think) 
about  some  other  article.    What  the  deuce  was  it? 

I  have  told  the  Royal  Society  people  to  send  you  a  list  of 
Fellows,  addressed  to  Black's. 

We  have  had  here  what  may  be  called  bad  weather  for  Eng- 
land, but  it  has  been  far  better  than  the  best  Edinburgh  weather 
known  to  my  experience. 

All  my  friends  are  out  committing  grouse-murder.  As  a 
vivisection  Commissioner  I  did  not  think  I  could  properly  ac- 
company them. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 


486  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxx 

Cragside,  Morpeth,  Aug,  24,  1875. 

My  dear  Baynes — I  think  is  like  enough  to   do  the 

"  Coelenterata  "  well  if  you  can  make  sure  of  his  doing  it  at  all. 
He  is  a  man  of  really  great  knowledge  of  the  literature  of 
Zoology,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  accident  of  being*  a  pro- 
crastinating impracticable  ass,  he  could  have  been  a  distin- 
guished man.  But  he  is  a  sort  of  Balaam-Centaur  with  the 
asinine  stronger  than  the  prophetic  moiety. 

I  should  be  disposed  to  try  him,  nevertheless. 

I  don't  think  I  have  had  final  revise  of  Biology  yet. 

I  do  not  know  that  "  Coelenterata  "  is  Lankester's  specialty. 
However,  he  is  sure  to  do  it  well  if  he  takes  it  up. — Ever  yours 
very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  OcU  12,  1875. 

My  dear  Baynes — Do  you  remember  my  telling  you  that  I 
should  before  long  be  publishing  a  book,  of  which  general  con- 
siderations on  Biology  would  form  a  part,  and  that  I  should 
have  to  go  over  the  same  ground  as  in  the  article  for  the  Ency- 
clopaedia ? 

Well,  that  prediction  is  about  to  be  verified,  and  I  want  to 
know  what  I  am  to  do. 

You  see,  as  I  am  neither  dealing  with  Theology,  nor  History, 
nor  Criticism,  I  can't  take  a  fresh  departure  and  say  something 
entirely  different  from  what  I  have  just  written. 

On  the  other  hand,  if  I  republish  what  stands  in  the  article, 
the  Encyclopaedia  very  naturally  growls. 

What  do  the  sweetest  of  Editors  and  the  most  liberal  of 
Proprietors  say  ought  to  be  done  under  the  circumstances? 

I  pause  for  a  reply. 

I  have  carried  about  Stanley's*  note  in  my  pocket-book 
until  I  am  sorry  to  say  the  flyleaf  has  become  hideously 
stained. 

The  wife  and  daughters  could  make  nothing  of  it,  but  I, 
accustomed  to  the  MS.  of  certain  correspondents,  have  no  doubt 
as  to  the  fourth  word  of  the  second  sentence.  It  is  "  Canter- 
bury." f    Nothing  can  be  plainer. 

Hoping  the  solution  is  entirely  satisfactory, — Believe  me, 
ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

♦  The  Dean*s  handwriting  was  proverbial. 

t  The  writing  of  this  word  is  carefully  slurred  until  it  is  almost  as 
illegible  as  the  original. 


i877  LETTERS  TO   BAYNES  487 

Though  he  refused  to  undertake  the  article  on  Distri- 
bution, he  managed  to  write  that  on  Evolution  (republished 
in  Collected  Essays,  ii.  187).  Thus  on  July  28,  1877,  he 
writes : — 

/  ought  to  do  "  Evolution,"  but  I  mightn't  and  I  shouldn't. 
Don't  see  how  it  is  practicable  to  do  justice  to  it  with  the  time 
at  my  disposal,  though  I  really  should  like  to  do  it,  and  I  am 
at  my  wits'  end  to  think  of  anybody  who  can  be  trusted  with  it. 

Perhaps  something  may  turn  up,  and  if  so  I  will  let  you 
know. 

The  something  in  the  way  of  more  time  did  turn  up  by 
dint  of  extra  pressure,  and  the  article  got  written  in  the 
course  of  the  autumn,  as  appears  from  the  following  of 
December  29,  1877  :— 

I  send  you  the  promised  skeleton  (with  a  good  deal  of  the 
flesh)  of  Evolution.  It  is  costing  me  infinite  labour  in  the  way 
of  reading,  but  I  am  glad  to  be  obliged  to  do  the  work,  which 
will  be  a  curious  and  instructive  chapter  in  the  history  of  Sci- 
ence. 

The  lawyer-like  faculty  of  putting  aside  a  subject  when 
done  with,  which  is  indicated  in  the  letter  of  March  16, 
1875,  reappears  in  the  following: — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  March  18,  1878. 

My  dear  Baynes — Your  printers  are  the  worst  species  of 
that  diabolic  genus  I  know  of.  It  is  at  least  a  month  since  I 
sent  them  a  revise  of  "  Evolution  "  by  no  means  finished,  and 
from  that  time  to  this  I  have  had  nothing  from  them. 

I  shall  forget  all  about  the  subject,  and  then  at  the  last 
moment  they  will  send  me  a  revise  in  a  great  hurry,  and  expect 
it  back  by  return  of  post. 

But  if  they  get  it,  may  I  go  to  their  Father! — Ever  yours 
very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Later  on,  the  pressure  of  work  again  forbade  him  to 
undertake  further  articles  on  Harvey,  Hunter,  and  Instinct. 

I  am  sorry  to  say  that  my  hands  are  full,  and  I  have  sworn 
by  as  many  gods  as  Hume  has  left  me,  to  uncSiertake  nothing 
more  for  a  long  while  beyond  what  I  am  already  pledged  to  do, 
a  small  book  anent  Harvey  being  one  of  these  things. 
32 


488  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxx 

And  on  June  9 : — 

After  nine  days'  meditation  (directed  exclusively  to  the 
Harvey  and  Hunter  question)  I  am  not  any  "  forrarder,"  as  the 
farmer  said  after  his  third  bottle  of  Gladstone  claret  So  per- 
haps I  had  better  mention  the  fact.  I  am  very  glad  you  have 
limed  Flower  for  "  Mammalia  "  and  "  Horse  " — nobody  could 
be  better. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  lf.yf.,/ufy  i.  1879. 

My  dear  Baynes — On  Thursday  last  I  sought  for  you  at 
the  Athenaeum  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  and  told  them  to  let  me 
know  if  you  came  in  in  the  evening  when  I  was  there  ag^ain. 
But  I  doubt  not  you  were  plunged  in  dissipation. 

My  demonstrator  Parker  showed  me  to-day  a  letter  he  had 
received  from  Black's,  asking  him  to  do  anything  in  the  small 
Zoology  way  between  H  and  L. 

He  is  a  modest  man,  and  so  didn't  ask  what  the  H L  he 

was  to  do,  but  he  looked  it. 

Will  you  enlighten  him  or  me,  and  I  will  convey  the  in- 
formation on? 

I  had  another  daughter  married  yesterday.  She  was  a  great 
pet  and  it  is  very  hard  lines  on  father  and  mother.  The  only 
consolation  is  that  she  has  married  a  right  good  fellow,  John 
Collier  the  artist. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

July  19,  1879. — Many  thanks  for  your  and  Mrs.  Ba)mes* 
congratulations.  I  am  very  well  content  with  my  son-in-law, 
and  have  almost  forgiven  him  for  carrying  off  one  of  my  pets, 
which  shows  a  Christian  spirit  hardly  to  be  expected  of  me. 

South  Kensington,  /ufy  2.  1880. 

My  dear  Baynes — I  have  been  thinking  over  the  matter  of 
Instinct,  and  have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  I  dare  not  under- 
take anything  fresh. 

There  is  an  address  at  Birmingham  in  the  autumn  looming 
large,  and  ghosts  of  unfinished  work  flitter  threateningly. — Ever 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 


CHAPTER   XXXI 
1876 

The  year  1876  was  again  a  busy  one,  almost  as  busy  as 
any  that  went  before.  As  in  1875,  his  London  work  was 
cut  in  two  by  a  course  of  lectures  in  Edinburgh,  and  sittings 
of  the  Royal  Commission  on  Scottish  Universities,  and  fur- 
thermore, by  a  trip  to  America  in  his  summer  vacation. 

In  the  winter  and  early  spring  he  gave  his  usual  lectures 
at  South  Kensington ;  a  course  to  working  men  "  On  the 
Evidence  as  to  the  Origin  of  Existing  Vertebrated  Animals," 
from  February  to  April  (Nature,  vols.  xiii.  and  xiv.) ;  a  lec- 
ture at  the  Royal  Institution  (January  28)  **  On  the  Border 
Territory  between  the  Animal  and  Vegetable  Kingdoms  " 
(Coll.  Essays,  viii.  170);  and  another  at  Glasgow  (February 
15)  **  On  the  Teleology  and  Morphology  of  the  Hand." 

In  this  lecture,  which  he  never  found  time  to  get  into 
final  shape  for  publication,  but  which  was  substantially  re- 
peated at  the  Working  Men's  College  in  1878,  he  touched 
upon  one  of  the  philosophic  aspects  of  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, namely,  how  far  is  it  consistent  with  the  argument 
from  design? 

Granting  provisionally  the  force  of  Paley's  argument  in 
individual  cases  of  adaptation,  and  illustrating  it  by  the  hand 
and  its  representative  in  various  of  the  Mammalia,  he  pro- 
ceeds to  show  by  the  facts  of  morphology  that  the  argu- 
ment, as  commonly  stated,  fails ;  that  each  mechanism,  each 
animal,  was  not  specially  made  to  suit  the  particular  purpose 
we  find  it  serving,  but  was  developed  from  a  single  com- 
mon type.  Yet  in  a  limited  and  special  sense  he  finds 
teleology  to  be  not  inconsistent  with  morphology.     The 

489 


490 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxxi 


two  sets  of  facts  flow  from  a  common  cause,  evolution. 
Descent  by  modification  accounts  for  similarity  of  structure ; 
the  process  of  gradual  adaptation  to  conditions  accounts  for 
the  existing  adaptation  to  purpose.  To  be  a  teleologist 
and  yet  accept  evolution  it  is  only  necessary  "  to  suppose 
that  the  original  plan  was  sketched  out — ^that  the  purpose 
was  foreshadowed  in  the  molecular  arrangements  out  of 
which  the  animals  have  come." 

This  was  no  new  view  of  his.  While,  ever  since  his 
first  review  of  the  Origin  in  1859  {ColL  Ess.  ii.  6),  he  had 
declared  the  commoner  and  coarser  forms  of  teleology  to 
find  their  most  formidable  opponent  in  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution, and  in  1869,  addressing  the  Geological  Society,  had 
spoken  of  "  those  final  causes,  have  been  named  barren 
virgins,  but  which  might  be  more  fitly  termed  the  hetairce 
of  philosophy,  so  constantly  have  they  led  men  astray" 
(ib,  viii.  80;  cp.  ii.  21,  36),  he  had,  in  his  Criticism  of  the 
Origin  (1864,  ii.  86),  and  the  Genealogy  of  Animals  (1869, 
ii.  109,  sqq.)y  shown  "  how  perhaps  the  most  remarkable 
service  to  the  philosophy  of  Biology  rendered  by  Mr.  Dar- 
win is  the  reconciliation  of  teleology  and  morphology,  and 
the  explanation  of  the  facts  of  both  which  his  views  offer 
.  .  .  the  wider  teleology,  which  is  actually  based  upon  the 
fundamental  proposition  of  evolution." 

His  note-book  shows  that  he  was  busy  with  ReptiHa 
from  Elgin  and  from  India;  and  with  his  Manual  of  In- 
vertebrate Anatomy y  which  was  published  the  next  year; 
while  he  refused  to  undertake  a  course  of  ten  lectures  at 
the  Royal  Institution,  saying  that  he  had  already  too  much 
other  work  to  do,  and  would  have  no  time  for  original 
work. 

About  this  time,  also,  in  answer  to  a  request  from  a 
believer  in  miracles,  "  that  those  who  fail  to  perceive  the 
cogency  of  the  evidence  by  which  the  occurrence  of  miracles 
is  supported,  should  not  confine  themselves  to  the  discussion 
of  general  principles,  but  should  grapple  with  some  par- 
ticular case  of  an  alleged  miracle,"  he  read  before  the  Meta- 
physical Society  a  paper  dealing  with  the  evidence  for  the 
miracle  of  the  resurrection.    (See  p.  342.) 


i876  VISIT   TO   EDINBURGH  491 

Some  friends  wished  him  to  publish  the  paper  as  a  con- 
tribution to  criticism ;  but  his  own  doubts  as  to  the  oppor- 
tuneness of  so  doing  were  confirmed  by  a  letter  from  Mr. 
John  Morley,  then  editor  of  the  Fortnightly  Review,  to  which 
he  replied  (January  18)  : — 

To  say  truth,  most  of  the  considerations  you  put  so  forcibly 
had  passed  through  my  mind — ^but  one  always  suspects  oneself 
of  cowardice  when  one's  own  interests  may  be  affected. 

At  the  beginning  of  May  he  went  to  Edinburgh.  He 
writes  home  on  May  8: — 

I  am  in  hopes  of  being  left  to  myself  this  time,  as  nobody 
has  called  but  Sir  Alexander  Grant  the  Principal,  Crum  Brown, 
whom  I  met  in  the  street  just  now,  and  Lister,  who  has  a  patient 
in  the  house.  I  have  been  getting  through  an  enormous  quan- 
tity of  reading,  some  tough  monographs  that  I  brought  with  me, 
the  first  volume  of  Forster's  Life  of  Swift,  Goodsir's  Life,  and  a 
couple  of  novels  of  George  Sand,  with  a  trifle  of  Paul  Heyse. 
You  should  read  George  Sand's  Cisarine  Dietrich  and  La  Mare 
au  Diahle  that  I  have  just  finished.  She  is  bigger  than  George 
Eliot,  more  flexible,  a  more  thorough  artist.  It  is  a  queer  thing, 
by  the  way,  that  I  have  never  read  Consuelo,  1  shall  get  it  here. 
When  I  come  back  from  my  lecture  I  like  to  rest  for  an  hour 
or  two  over  a  good  story.    It  freshens  me  wonderfully. 

However,  social  Edinburgh  did  not  leave  him  long  to 
himself,  but  though  he  might  thus  lose  something  of  work- 
ing time,  this  loss  was  counterbalanced  by  the  dispelling 
of  some  of  the  fits  of  depression  which  still  assailed  him 
from  time  to  time. 

On  May  25  he  writes : — 

The  General  Assembly  «  sitting  now,  and  I  thought  I  would 
look  in.  It  was  very  crowded  and  I  had  to  stand,  so  I  was  soon 
spied  out  and  invited  to  sit  beside  the  Lord  High  Commissioner, 
who  represents  the  Crown  in  the  Assembly,  and  there  I  heard  an 
ecclesiastical  row  about  whether  a  certain  church  should  be 
allowed  to  have  a  cover  with  IHS  on  the  Communion  Table  or 
not.  After  three  hours'  discussion  the  IHSers  were  beaten.  I 
was  introduced  to  the  Commissioner  Lord  Galloway,  and  asked 
to  dine  to-night.  So  I  felt  bound  to  go  to  the  special  levee  at 
Holyrood  with  my  colleagues  this  morning,  and  I  shall  have  to 
go  to  my  Lady  Galloway's  reception  in  honour  of  the  Queen's 


492 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxi 


birthday  to-morrow.  Luckily  there  will  be  no  more  of  it. 
Vanity  of  Vanities!  Saturday  afternoon  I  go  out  to  Lord 
Young's  place  to  spend  Sunday.  I  have  been  in  rather  a  hypo- 
chondriacal state  of  mind,  and  I  will  see  if  this  course  of  medi- 
cine will  drive  the  seven  devils  out. 

One  of  the  chief  friendships  which  sprang  from  this 
residence  in  Edinburgh  was  that  with  Dr.  (afterwards  Sir 
John)  Skelton,  widely  known  under  his  literary  pseudonym 
of  "  Shirley."  A  civil  servant  as  well  as  a  man  of  letters, 
he  united  practical  life  with  literature,  a  combination  that 
appealed  particularly  to  Huxley,  so  that  he  was  a  constant 
visitor  at  Dr.  Skelton's  picturesque  house,  the  Hermitage 
of  Braid,  near  Edinburgh.  A  number  of  letters  addressed 
to  Skelton  from  1875  to  1891  show  that  with  him  Huxley 
felt  the  stimulus  of  an  appreciative  correspondent. 

4  Melville  Street,  Edinburgh.  June  23.  1876. 

My  dear  Skelton — I  do  not  understand  how  it  is  that  your 
note  has  been  so  long  in  reaching  me ;  but  I  hasten  to  repel  the 
libellous  insinuation  that  I  have  vowed  a  vow  against  dining  at 
the  Hermitage. 

I  wish  I  could  support  that  repudiation  by  at  once  accepting 
your  invitation  for  Saturday  or  Sunday,  but  my  Saturdays  and 
Sundays  are  mortgaged  to  one  or  other  of  your  judges  (good 
judges,  obviously). 

Shall  you  be  at  home  on  Monday  or  Tuesday?  If  so,  I 
would  put  on  a  kilt  (to  be  as  little  dressed  as  possible),  and  find 
my  way  out  and  back;  happily  improving  my  mind  on  the 
journey  with  the  tracts  you  mention. — Ever  yours  very  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Melville  Street,  Edinburgh,  July  i,  1876. 
My  dear  Skelton — Very  many  thanks  for  the  copy  of  the 
Comedy  of  the  Nodes,  which  reached  me  two  or  three  days  ago. 
Turning  over  the  pages  I  came  upon  the  Shepherd's  "  Terrible 
Journey  of  Timbuctoo,"  which  I  enjoyed  as  much  as  when  I  first 
read  it  thirty  odd  years  ago. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 
On  June  23  he  writes  home : — 

Did  you  read  Oilman's  note  asking  me  to  give  the  inaugural 
discourse  at  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  and  offering  £100  on 


1876  VISITS  AMERICA  493 

the  part  of  the  trustees  ?  I  am  minded  to  do  it  on  our  way  back 
from  the  south,  but  don't  much  like  taking  money  for  the  per- 
formance. Tell  me  what  you  think  about  this  at  once,  as  I  must 
reply. 

This  visit  to  America  had  been  under  discussion  for  some 
time.  It  is  mentioned  as  a  possibility  in  a  letter  to  Darwin 
two  years  before.  Early  in  1876  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison 
was  commissioned  by  an  American  correspondent — ^who,  by 
the  way,  had  named  his  son  Thomas  Huxley — to  give  my 
father  the  following  message : — "  The  whole  nation  is  elec- 
trified by  the  announcement  that  Professor  Huxley  is  to 
visit  us  next  fall.  We  will  make  infinitely  more  of  him  than 
•we  did  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  his  retinue  of  lords  and 
dukes."  Certainly  the  people  of  the  States  gave  him  an 
enthusiastic  welcome;  his  writings  had  made  him  known 
far  and  wide ;  as  the  manager  of  the  Califomian  department 
at  the  Philadelphia  Exhibition  told  him,  the  very  miners  of 
California  read  his  books  over  their  camp  fires;  and  his 
visit  was  so  far  like  a  royal  progress,  that  unless  he  entered 
a  city  disguised  under  the  name  of  Jones  or  Smith,  he  was 
liable  not  merely  to  be  interviewed,  but  to  be  called  upon 
to  "  address  a  few  words  "  to  the  citizens. 

Leaving  their  family  under  the  hospitable  care  of  Sir  W. 
and  Lady  Armstrong  at  Cragside,  my  father  and  mother 
started  on  July  27  on  board  the  Germanic,  reaching  New 
York  on  August  5.  My  father  sometimes  would  refer,  half 
jestingly,  to  the  trip  as  his  second  honeymoon,  when,  for 
the  first  time  in  twenty  years,  he  and  my  mother  set  forth 
by  themselves,  free  from  all  family  cares.  And  indeed,  there 
was  the  underlying  resemblance  that  this  too  came  at  the 
end  of  a  period  of  struggle  to  attain,  and  marked  the  be- 
ginning of  a  more  settled  period.  His  reception  in  America 
may  be  said  to  emphasise  his  definite  establishment  in  the 
first  rank  of  English  thinkers.  It  was  a  signal  testimony 
to  the  wide  extent  of  his  influence,  hardly  suspected,  in- 
deed, by  himself ;  an  influence  due  above  all  to  the  fact  that 
he  did  not  allow  his  studies  to  stand  apart  from  the  moving 
problems  of  existence,  but  brought  the  new  and  regener- 
ating ideas  into  contact  with  life  at  every  point,  and  that  his 


r  - 


4^  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR  HUXLEY  chap,  xxxi 

championship  of  the  new  doctrines  had  at  the  same  time 
been  a  championship  of  freedom  and  sincerity  in  thought 
and  word  against  shams  and  self-deceptions  of  every  kind. 
It  was  not  so  much  the  preacher  of  new  doctrines  who  was 
welcomed,  as  the  apostle  of  veracity — not  so  much  the  stu- 
dent of  science  as  the  teacher  of  men. 

Moreover,  another  sentiment  coloured  this  holiday  visit. 
He  was  to  see  again  the  beloved  sister  of  his  boyhood.  She 
had  always  prophesied  his  success,  and  now  after  thirty 
years  her  prophecy  was  fulfilled  by  his  coming,  and,  in- 
deed, exceeded  by  the  manner  of  it. 

Mr.  Smalley,  then  London  correspondent  of  the  New 
York  Tribune,  was  a  fellow  passenger  of  his  on  board  the 
Germanic,  and  tells  an  iilteresting  anecdote  of  him : — 

Mr.  Huxley  stood  on  the  deck  of  the  Germanic  as  she 
steamed  up  the  harbour  of  New  York,  and  he  enjoyed  to  the 
full  that  marvellous  panorama.  At  all  times  he  was  on  intimate 
terms  with  Nature  and  also  with  the  joint  work  of  Nature 
and  Man ;  Man's  Place  in  Nature  being  to  him  interesting  from 
more  points  of  view  than  one.  As  we  drew  nfear  the  city — 
this  was  in  1876,  you  will  remember — ^he  asked  what  were  the 
tall  tower  and  tall  building  with  a  cupola,  then  the  two  most 
conspicuous  objects.  I  told  him  the  Tribune  and  the  Western 
Union  Telegraph  buildings.  "  Ah,"  he  said,  "  that  is  interest- 
ing ;  that  is  American.  In  the  Old  World  the  first  things  you  see 
as  you  approach  a  great  city  are  steeples;  here  you  see,  first, 
centres  of  intelligence."  Next  to  those  the  tug-boats  seemed  to 
attract  him  as  they  tore  fiercely  up  and  down  and  across  the 
bay.  He  looked  long  at  them  and  finally  said,  "  If  I  were  not  a 
man  I  think  I  should  like  to  be  a  tug."  They  seemed  to  him 
the  condensation  and  complete  expression  of  the  energy  and 
force  in  which  he  delighted. 

The  personal  welcome  he  received  from  the  friends  he 
visited  was  of  the  warmest.  On  the  arrival  of  the  Germanic 
the  travellers  were  met  by  Mr.  Appleton  the  publisher,  and 
carried  off  to  his  country  house  at  Riverdale.  While  his 
wife  was  taken  to  Saratoga  to  see  what  an  American  summer 
resort  was  like,  he  himself  went  on  the  9th  to  New  Haven, 
to  inspect  the  fossils  at  Yale  College,  collected  from  the 
Tertiary  deposits  of  the  Far  West  by  Professor  Marsh,  with 


i876  AT  YALE  495 

great  labour  and  sometimes  at  the  risk  of  his  scalp.  Pro- 
fessor Marsh  told  me  how  he  took  him  to  the  University, 
and  proposed  to  begin  by  showing  him  over  the  buildings. 
He  refused.  "  Show  me  what  you  have  got  inside  them ; 
I  can  see  plenty  of  bricks  and  mortar  in  my  own  country." 
So  they  went  straight  to  the  fossjils,  and  as  Professor  Marsh 
writes ; — * 

One  of  Huxley's  lectures  in  New  York  was  to  be  on  the 
genealogy  of  the  horse,  a  subject  which  he  had  already  written 
about,  based  entirely  upon  European  specimens.  My  own  ex- 
plorations had  led  me  to  conclusions  quite  different  from  his, 
and  my  specimens  seemed  to  me  to  prove  conclusively  that  the 
horse  originated  in  the  New  World  and  not  in  the  Old,  and  that 
its  genealogy  must  be  worked  out  here.  With  some  hesitation, 
I  laid  the  whole  matter  frankly  before  Huxley,  and  he  spent 
nearly  two  days  going  over  my  specimens  with  me,  and  testing 
each  point  I  made. 

At  each  inquiry,  whether  he  had  a  specimen  to  illustrate 
such  and  such  a  point  or  exemplify  a  transition  from  earlier 
and  less  specialised  forms  to  later  and  more  specialised  ones, 
Professor  Marsh  would  simply  turn  to  his  assistant  and  bid 
him  fetch  box  number  so  and  so,  until  Huxley  turned  upon 
him  and  said,  "  I  believe  you  are  a  magician ;  whatever  I 
want,  you  just  conjure  it  up." 

The  upshot  of  this  examination  was  that  he  recast  a 
great  part  of  what  he  meant  to  say  at  New  York.  When  he 
had  seen  the  specimens,  and  thoroughly  weighed  their  im- 
port, continues  Professor  Marsh — 

He  then  informed  me  that  all  this  was  new  to  him,  and  that 
my  facts  demonstrated  the  evolution  of  the  horse  beyond  ques- 
tion, and  for  the  first  time  indicated  the  direct  line  of  descent 
of  an  existing  animal.  With  the  generosity  of  true  greatness, 
he  gave  up  his  own  opinions  in  the  face  of  new  truth,  and  took 
my  conclusions  as  the  basis  of  his  famous  New  York  lecture 
on  the  horse.  He  urged  me  to  prepare  without  delay  a  volume 
on  the  genealogy  of  the  horse,  based  upon  the  specimens  I  had 
shown  him.  This  I  promised,  but  other  work  and  new  duties 
have  thus  far  prevented. 

^  American  Journal  of  Science ^  vol.  1.  August  1895. 


496  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  ch\p.  xxxi 

A  letter  to  his  wife  describes  his  visit  to  Yale : — 

My  excellent  host  met  me  at  the  station,  and  seems  as  if  he 
could  not  make  enough  of  me.  I  am  installed  in  apartments 
which  were  occupied  by  his  uncle,  the  millionaire  Peabody,  and 
am  as  quiet  as  if  I  were  in  my  own  house.  We  have  had  a  pre- 
liminary canter  over  the  fossils,  and  I  have  seen  some  things 
which  were  worth  all  the  journey  across. 

This  is  the  most  charmingly  picturesque  town,  with  the 
streets  lined  by  avenues  of  elm  trees  which  meet  overhead.  I 
have  never  seen  anything  like  it,  and  you  must  come  and  look 
at  it.  There  is  fossil  work  enough  to  occupy  me  till  the  end 
of  the  week,  and  I  have  arranged  to  go  to  Springfield  on  Mon- 
day to  examine  the  famous  footprints  of  the  Connecticut  Valley. 

The  Governor  has  called  upon  me,  and  I  shall  have  to  go 
and  do  pretty-behaved  ches  lui  to-morrow.  An  application  has 
come  for  an  autograph,  but  I  have  not  been  interviewed ! 

This  immunity,  however,  did  not  last  long.  He  appears 
to  have  been  caught  by  the  interviewer  the  next  day,  for  he 
writes  on  the  nth : — 

I  have  not  seen  the  notice  in  the  World  you  speak  of.  You 
will  be  amused  at  the  article  written  by  the  interviewer.  He  was 
evidently  surprised  to  meet  with  so  little  of  the  "  highfalutin  " 
philosopher  in  me,  and  says  I  am  "  affable  "  and  of  "  the  com- 
mercial or  mercantile  "  type.  That  is  something  I  did  not  know, 
and  I  am  rather  proud  of  it.    We  may  be  rich  yet. 

As  to  his  work  at  Yale  Museum,  he  writes  in  the  same 
letter : — 

We  are  hard  at  work  still.  Breakfast  at  8.30 — go  over  to  the 
Museum  with  Marsh  at  9  or  10 — ^work  till  1.30 — dine — go  back 
to  Museum  to  work  till  6.  Then  Marsh  takes  me  for  a  drive  to 
see  the  views  about  the  town,  and  back  to  tea  about  half -past 
eight.  He  is  a  wonderfully  good  fellow,  full  of  fun  and  stories 
about  his  Western  adventures,  and  the  collection  of  fossils  is 
the  most  wonderful  thing  I  ever  saw.  I  wish  I  could  spare 
three  weeks  instead  of  one  to  study  it. 

To-morrow  evening  we  are  to  have  a  dinner  by  way  of 
winding  up,  and  he  has  asked  a  lot  of  notables  to  meet  me.  I 
assure  you  I  am  being  "  made  of,"  as  I  thought  nobody  but  the 
little  wife  was  foolish  enough  to  do. 


1876  LETTERS  FROM   NEWPORT  497 

On  the  i6th  he  left  to  join  the  "  Alexander  Agassiz  "  at 
Newport,  whence  he  wrote  the  following  letters: — 

Newport,  Aug.  17,  1876. 

My  dear  Marsh — I  really  cannot  say  how  much  I  enjoyed 
my  visit  to  New  Haven.  My  recollections  are  sorting  them- 
selves out  by  degrees  and  I  find  how  rich  my  store  is.  The 
more  I  think  of  it  the  more  clear  it  is  that  your  great  work  is 
the  settlement  of  the  pedigree  of  the  horse. 

My  wife  joins  with  me  in  kind  regards.  I  am  yours  very 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

To  Mr.  Clarence  King 

Newport,  Aug.  19,  1876. 

My  dear  Sir — In  accordance  with  your  wish,  I  very  will- 
ingly put  into  writing  the  substance  of  the  opinion  as  to  the 
importance  of  Professor  Marsh's  collection  of  fossils  which  I 
expressed  to  you  yesterday.  As  you  are  aware,  I  devoted  four 
or  five  days  to  the  examination  of  this  collection,  and  was  en- 
abled by  Prof.  Marsh's  kindness  to  obtain  a  fair  conception  of 
the  whole. 

I  am  disposed  to  think  that  whether  we  regard  the  abun- 
dance of  material,  the  number  of  complete  skeletons  of  the  vari- 
ous species,  or  the  extent  of  geological  time  covered  by  the 
collection,  which  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  see  at  New  Haven, 
there  is  no  collection  of  fossil  vertebrates  in  existence,  which 
can  be  compared  with  it.  I  say  this  without  forgetting  Mont- 
martre,  Siwalik,  or  Pikermi — and  I  think  that  I  am  quite  safe 
in  adding  that  no  collection  which  has  been  hitherto  formed 
approaches  that  made  by  Professor  Marsh,  in  the  completeness 
of  the  chain  of  evidence  by  which  certain  existing  mammals 
are  connected  with  their  older  tertiary  ancestry. 

It  is  of  the  highest  importance  to  the  progress  of  Biological 
Science  that  the  publication  of  this  evidence,  accompanied  by 
illustrations  of  such  fulness  as  to  enable  palaeontologists  to  form 
their  own  judgment  as  to  its  value,  should  take  place  without 
delay. — I  am  yours  very  faithfully, 

Thomas  H.  Huxley. 

Breaking  their  journey  at  Boston,  they  went  from 
Newport  to  Petersham,  in  the  highlands  of  Worcester 
County,  where  they  were  the  guests  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  John 


498  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxi 

Fiske,  at  their  summer  home.  Among  the  other  visitors 
were  the  eminent  musical  composer  Mr.  Paine,  the  poet 
Cranch,  and  daughters  of  Hawthorne  and  Longfellow,  so 
that  they  found  themselves  in  the  midst  of  a  particularly 
cheerful  and  delightful  party.  From  Petersham  they  pro- 
ceeded to  Buffalo,  the  meeting-place  that  year  of  the  Ameri- 
can Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science,  which  my 
father  had  promised  to  attend.  Here  they  stayed  with  Mr. 
Marshall,  a  leading  lawyer,  who  afterwards  visited  them  in 
England. 

A  week  was  spent  at  Niagara,  partly  in  making  holiday, 
partly  in  shaping  the  lectures  which  had  to  be  delivered  at 
the  end  of  the  trip.  As  to  the  impression  made  upon  him 
by  the  Falls — ^an  experience  which,  it  is  generally  presumed, 
every  traveller  is  bound  to  record — I  may  note  that  after 
the  first  disappointment  at  their  appearance,  inevitable 
wherever  the  height  of  a  waterfall  is  less  than  the  breadth, 
he  found  in  them  an  inexhaustible  charm  and  fascination. 
As  in  duty  bound,  he,  with  my  mother,  completed  his  experi- 
ences by  going  under  the  wall  of  waters  to  the  "  Cave  of  the 
Winds."  But  of  all  things  nothing  pleased  him  more  than 
to  sit  of  an  evening  by  the  edge  of  the  river,  and  through 
the  roar  of  the  cataract  to  listen  for  the  under-sound  of  the 
beaten  stones  grinding  together  at  its  foot. 

Leaving  Niagara  on  September  2,  they  travelled  to  Cin- 
cinnati, a  20-hours*  journey,  where  they  rested  a  day ;  on  the 
4th  another  10  hours  took  them  to  Nashville,  where  they 
were  to  meet  his  sister,  Mrs.  Scott.  Though  11  years  his 
senior,  she  maintained  her  vigour  and  brightness  undimmed, 
as  indeed  she  did  to  the  end  of  her  life,  surviving  him  by 
a  few  weeks.  As  she  now  stood  on  the  platform  at  Nash- 
ville, Mrs.  Huxley,  who  had  never  seen  her,  picked  her  out 
from  among  all  the  people  by  her  piercing  black  eyes,  so 
like  those  of  her  mother  as  described  in  the  Autobiograph- 
ical sketch  (ColL  Ess.  i.). 

Nashville,  her  son's  home,  had  been  chosen  as  the  meet- 
ing-place by  Mrs.  Scott,  because  it  was  not  so  far  south  nor 
so  hot  as  Montgomery,  where  she  was  then  living.  Never- 
theless in  Tennessee  the  heat  of  the  American  summer  was 


1876  ADDRESS  AT  BALTIMORE  499 

very  trying,  and  the  good  people  of  the  town  further  drew 
upon  the  too  limited  opportunities  of  their  guest's  brief  visit 
by  sending  a  formal  deputation  to  beg  that  he  would  either 
deliver  an  address,  or  be  entertained  at  a  public  dinner,  or 
"  state  his  views  " — to  an  interviewer  I  suppose.  He  could 
not  well  refuse  one  of  the  alternatives ;  and  the  greater  part 
of  one  day  was  spent  in  preparing  a  short  address  on  the 
geology  of  Tennessee,  which  was  delivered  on  the  evening 
of  September  7.  He  spoke  for  twenty  minutes,  but  had 
scarcely  any  voice,  which  was  not  to  be  wondered  at,  as  he 
was  so  tired  that  he  had  kept  his  room  the  whole  day,  while 
his  wife  received  the  endless  string  of  callers. 

The  next  day  they  returned  to  Cincinnati;  and  on  the 
9th  went  on  to  Baltimore,  where  they  stayed  with  Mr. 
Garrett,  then  President  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio  railway. 

The  Johns  Hopkins  University  at  Baltimore,  for  which 
he  was  to  deliver  the  opening  address,  had  been  instituted 
by  its  founder  on  a  novel  basis.  It  was  devoted  to  post- 
graduate study;  the  professors  and  lecturers  received  in- 
comes entirely  independent  of  the  pupils  they  taught  Men 
came  to  study  for  the  sake  of  learning,  not  for  the  sake 
of  passing  some  future  examination.  The  endowment  was 
devoted  in  the  first  place  to  the  furtherance  of  research; 
the  erection  of  buildings  was  put  into  the  background.  "  It 
has  been  my  fate,"  commented  Huxley,  "  to  see  great  edu- 
cational funds  fossilise  into  mere  bricks  and  mortar  in  the 
petrifying  springs  of  architecture,  with  nothing  left  to  work 
them.  A  great  warrior  is  said  to  have  made  a  desert  and 
called  it  peace.  Trustees  have  sometimes  made  a  palace 
and  called  it  a  university." 

Half  the  fortune  of  the  founder  had  gone  to  this  univer- 
sity ;  the  other  half  to  the  foundation  of  a  great  and  splen- 
didly equipped  hospital  for  Baltimore.  This  was  the  reason 
why  the  discussion  of  medical  training  occupies  fully  half  of 
the  address  upon  the  general  principles  of  education,  in 
which,  indeed,  lies  the  heart  of  his  message  to  America,  a 
message  already  delivered  to  the  old  country,  but  specially 
appropriate  for  the  new  nation  developing  so  rapidly  in  size 
and  physical  resources. 


JCX)  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxi 

I  cannot  say  that  I  am  in  the  slightest  degree  impressed  by 
your  bigness  or  your  material  resources,  as  such.  Size  is  not 
grandeur,  territory  does  not  make  a  nation.  The  great  issue, 
about  which  hangs  a  true  sublimity,  and  the  terror  of  overhang- 
ing fate,  is,  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  all  these  things  ?  .  .  . 

The  one  condition  of  success,  your  sole  safeguard,  is  the 
moral  worth  and  intellectual  clearness  of  the  individual  citizen. 
Education  cannot  give  these,  but  it  can  cherish  them  and  bring 
them  to  the  front  in  whatever  station  of  society  they  are  to  be 
found,  and  the  universities  ought  to  be  and  may  be,  the  fortresses 
of  the  higher  life  of  the  nation. 

This  address  was  delivered  under  circumstances  of  pecul- 
iar difficulty.  The  day  before,  an  expedition  had  been  made 
to  Washington,  from  which  Huxley  returned  very  tired, 
only  to  be  told  that  he  was  to  attend  a  formal  dinner  and 
reception  the  same  evening.  "  I  don't  know  how  I  shall 
stand  it,"  he  remarked.  Going  to  his  room,  he  snatched  an 
hour  or  two  of  rest,  but  was  then  called  upon  to  finish  his 
address  before  going  out.  It  seems  that  it  had  to  be  ready 
for  simultaneous  publication  in  the  New  York  papers.  Now 
the  lecture  was  not  written  out;  it  was  to  be  given  from 
notes  only.  So  he  had  to  deliver  it  in  extenso  to  the  re- 
porter, who  took  it  down  in  shorthand,  promising  to  let  him 
have  a  longhand  copy  in  good  time  the  next  morning.  It 
did  not  come  till  the  last  moment.  Glancing  at  it  on  his 
way  to  the  lecture  theatre,  he  discovered  to  his  horror  that 
it  was  written  upon  "  flimsy  "  from  which  he  would  not  be 
able  to  read  it  with  any  success.  He  wisely  gave  up  the 
attempt,  and  made  up  his  mind  to  deliver  the  lecture  as 
best  he  could  from  memory.  The  lecture  as  delivered  was 
very  nearly  the  same  as  that  which  he  had  dictated  the 
night  before,  but  with  some  curious  discrepancies  between 
the  two  accounts,  which,  he  used  to  say,  occurring  as  they 
did  in  versions  both  purporting  to  have  been  taken  dow^n 
from  his  lips,  might  well  lead  the  ingenious  critic  of  the 
future  to  pronounce  them  both  spurious,  and  to  declare  that 
the  pretended  original  was  never  delivered  under  the  cir- 
cumstances alleged.* 

*  Cp.  the  incident  at  Belfast,  p.  444. 


1876  LECTURES  AT   NEW  YORK  501 

There  was  an  audience  of  some  2,000,  and  I  am  told  that 
when  he  began  to  speak  of  the  time  that  would  come  when 
they  too  would  experience  the  dangers  of  over-population 
and  poverty  in  their  midst,  and  would  then  understand  what 
Europe  had  to  contend  with  more  fully  than  they  did,  a 
pin  could  have  been  heard  to  drop.  At  the  end  of  the  lec- 
ture, amid  the  enthusiastic  applause  of  the  crowd,  he  made 
his  way  to  the  front  of  the  box  where  his  hosts  and  their 
party  were,  and  received  their  warm  congratulations.  But 
he  missed  one  voice  amongst  them,  and  turning  to  where 
his  wife  sat  in  silent  triumph  almost  beyond  speech,  he  said, 
"  And  have  you  no  word  for  me  ?  "  then,  himself  also  deeply 
moved,  stooped  down  and  kissed  her. 

This  address  was  delivered  on  Tuesday,  September  12. 
On  the  14th  he  went  to  Philadelphia,  and  on  the  15th  to 
New  York,  where  he  delivered  his  three  lectures  on  Evo- 
lution on  Monday,  Wednesday,  and  Friday,  September  18, 
20,  and  22. 

These  lectures  are  very  good  examples  of  the  skill  with 
which  he  could  present  a  complicated  subject  in  a  simple 
form,  the  subject  seeming  to  unroll  itself  by  the  force  of  its 
own  naked  logic,  and  carrying  conviction  the  further 
through  the  simplicity  of  its  presentation.  Indeed,  an  un- 
friendly critic  once  paid  him  an  unintended  compliment, 
when  trying  to  make  out  that  he  was  no  great  speaker; 
that  all  he  did  was  to  set  some  interesting  theory  unadorned 
before  his  audience,  when  such  success  as  he  attained  was 
due  to  the  compelling  nature  of  the  subject  itself. 

Since  his  earlier  lectures  to  the  public  on  evolution,  the 
paleontological  evidences  had  been  accumulating;  the  case 
could  be  stated  without  some  of  the  reservations  of  former 
days;  and  he  brings  forward  two  telling  instances  in  con- 
siderable detail,  the  one  showing  how  the  gulf  between  two 
such  apparently  distinct  groups  as  Birds  and  Reptiles  is 
bridged  over  by  ancient  fossils  intermediate  in  form;  the 
other  illustrating  from  Professor  Marsh's  new  collections 
the  lineal  descent  of  the  specialised  Horse  from  the  more 
general  type  of  quadruped. 

The  farthest  back  of  these  was  a  creature  with  four  toes 


502 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY 


on  the  front  limb  and  three  on  the  hind  limb.  Judging: 
from  the  completeness  of  the  series  or  forms  so  far,  he 
ventured  to  indulge  in  a  prophecy. 

Thus,  thanks  to  these  important  researches,  it  has  become 
evident  that,  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  extends,  the  his- 
tory of  the  horse-type  is  exactly  and  precisely  that  which  could 
have  been  predicted  from  a  knowledge  of  the  principles  of 
evolution.  And  the  knowledge  we  now  possess  justifies  us  com- 
pletely in  the  anticipation  that  when  the  still  lower  Eocene 
deposits,  and  those  which  belong  to  the  Cretaceous  epoch,  have 
yielded  up  their  remains  of  ancestral  equine  animals,  we  shall 
find,  first,  a  form  with  four  complete  toes  and  a  rudiment  of  the 
innermost  or  first  digit  in  front,  with,  probably,  a  rudiment  of 
the  fifth  digit  in  the  hind  foot ;  while,  in  still  older  forms,  the 
series  of  the  digits  will  be  more  and  more  complete,  until  we 
come  to  the  five-toed  animals,  in  which,  if  the  doctrine  of  evo- 
lution is  well  founded,  the  whole  series  must  have  taken  its 
origin. 

Seldom  has  prophecy  been  sooner  fulfilled.  Within  two 
months,  Professor  Marsh  had  discovered  a  new  genus  of 
equine  mammals,  Eohippus,  from  the  lowest  Eocene  de- 
posits of  the  West,  which  corresponds  very  nearly  to  the 
description  given  above. 

He  continues: — 

That  is  what  I  mean  by  demonstrative  evidence  of  evolu- 
tion. An  inductive  hypothesis  is  said  to  be  demonstrated  when 
the  facts  are  shown  to  be  in  entire  accordance  with  it  If  that  is 
not  scientific  proof,  there  are  no  merely  inductive  conclusions 
which  can  be  said  to  be  proved.  And  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
at  the  present  time,  rests  upon  exactly  as  secure  a  foundation 
as  the  Copernican  theory  of  the  motions  of  the  heavenly  bodies 
did  at  the  time  of  its  promulgation.  Its  logical  basis  is  of  pre- 
cisely the  same  character — ^the  coincidence  of  the  observed  facts 
with  theoretical  requirements. 

He  left  New  York  on  September  23.  "  I  had  a  very 
pleasant  trip  in  Yankee-land,"  he  writes  to  Professor  Baynes, 
"  and  did  not  give  utterance  to  a  good  deal  that  I  am  re- 
ported to  have  said  there."  He  reached  England  in  good 
time  for  the  beginning  of  his  autumn  lectures,  and  his 


1876  LETTER   TO  PROFESSOR   MARSH  503 

ordinary  busy  life  absorbed  him  again.  He  did  not  fail  to 
give  his  London  audiences  the  results  of  the  recent  dis- 
coveries in  American  paleontology,  and  on  December  4 
delivered  a  lecture  at  the  London  Institution,  "  On  Recent 
Additions  to  the  Knowledge  of  the  Pedigree  of  the  Horse." 
In  connection  with  this  he  writes  to  Professor  Marsh : — 

4  Marlborough  Place.  London,  N.W., 
Dec,  27,  1876. 

My  dear  Marsh — I  hope  you  do  not  think  it  remiss  of  me 
that  I  have  not  written  to  you  since  my  return,  but  you  will 
understand  that  I  plunged  into  a  coil  of  work,  and  will  forgive 
me.  But  I  do  not  mean  to  let  the  year  slip  away  without  sending 
you  all  our  good  wishes  for  its  successor — which  I  hope  will  not 
vanish  without  seeing  you  among  us. 

I  blew  your  trumpet  the  other  day  at  the  London  Institution 
in  a  lecture  about  the  Horse  question.  I  did  not  know  then  that 
you  had  got  another  step  back  as  I  see  you  have  by  the  note  to 
my  last  lecture,  which  Youmans  has  just  sent  me. 

I  must  thank  you  very  heartily  for  the  pains  you  have  taken 
over  the  woodcuts  of  the  lectures.  It  is  a  great  improvement 
to  have  the  patterns  of  the  grinders. 

I  have  promised  to  give  a  lecture  at  the  Royal  Institution 
on  the  2 1st  January  next,  and  I  am  thinking  of  discoursing  on 
the  Birds  with  teeth.  Have  you  anything  new  to  tell  on  that 
subject?  I  have  implicit  faith  in  the  inexhaustibility  of  the 
contents  of  those  boxes. 

Our  voyage  home  was  not  so  successful  as  that  out.  The 
weather  was  cold  and  I  got  a  chill  which  laid  me  up  for  several 
days,  in  fact  I  was  not  well  for  some  weeks  after  my  return. 
But  I  am  vigorous  again  now. 

Pray  remember  me  kindly  to  all  New  Haven  friends.  My 
wife  joins  with  me  in  kindest  regards  and  good  wishes  for  the 
new  year.  "  Tell  him  we  expect  to  see  him  next  year." — I  am, 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

On  December  16  he  delivered  a  lecture  "  On  the  Study 
of  Biology,"  in  connection  with  the  Loan  Collection  of 
Scientific  Apparatus  at  South  Kensington  {Coll,  Essays,  iii. 
262),  dealing  with  the  origin  of  the  name  Biology,  its  re- 
lation to  Sociology — "  we  have  allowed  that  province  of 
Biology  to  become  autonomous;  but  I  should  like  you  to 
33 


504  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxi 

recollect  that  this  is  a  sacrifice,  and  that  you  should  not  be 
surprised  if  it  occasionally  happens  that  you  see  a  biologist 
apparently  trespassing  in  the  region  of  philosophy  or  poli- 
tics; or  meddling  with  human  education;  because,  after  all, 
that  is  a  part  of  his  kingdom  which  he  has  only  volun- 
tarily forsaken  " — how  to  learn  biology,  the  use  of  Muse- 
ums, and  above  all,  the  utility  of  biology,  as  helping  to  g^ve 
right  ideas  in  this  world,  which  "  is  after  all,  absolutely  gov- 
erned by  ideas,  and  very  often  by  the  wildest  and  most 
hypothetical  ideas/' 

This  lecture  on  Biology  was  first  published  among  the 
American  Addresses  in  1877. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  an  extremely  Broad  Church 
divine  was  endeavouring  to  obtain  the  signatures  of  men 
of  science  to  a  document  he  had  drawn  up  protesting 
against  certain  orthodox  doctrines.  Huxley,  however,  re- 
fused to  sign  the  protest,  and  wrote  the  following  letter  of 
explanation,  a  copy  of  which  he  sent  to  Mr.  Darwin. 

A^ov.  18,  1876. 

Dear  Sir — I  have  read  the  "  Protest,"  with  a  copy  of  which 
you  have  favoured  me,  and  as  you  wish  that  I  should  do  so,  I 
will  trouble  you  with  a  brief  statement  of  my  reasons  for  my 
inability  to  sign  it. 

I  object  to  clause  2  on  the  ground  long  since  taken  by 
Hume  that  the  order  of  the  universe  such  as  we  observe  it 
to  be,  furnishes  us  with  the  only  data  upon  which  we  can 
base  any  conclusion  as  to  the  character  of  the  originator 
thereof. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  men  sin,  and  the  consequences  of  their 
sins  affect  endless  generations  of  their  progeny.  Men  are 
tempted,  men  are  punished  for  the  sins  of  others  without  merit 
or  demerit  of  their  own;  and  they  are  tormented  for  their  evil 
deeds  as  long  as  their  consciousness  lasts. 

The  theological  doctrines  to  which  you  refer,  therefore,  are 
simply  extensions  of  generalisations  as  well  based  as  any  in 
physical  science.  Very  likely  they  are  illegitimate  extensions  of 
these  generalisations,  but  that  does  not  make  them  wrong  in 
principle. 

And  I  should  consider  it  waste  of  time  to  "  protest "  against 
that  which  is. 


1876  THE   HALF-AND-HALF  SCHOOL  505 

As  regards  No.  3  I  find  that  as  a  matter  of  experience, 
erroneous  beliefs  are  punished,  and  right  beliefs  are  rewarded 
— though  very  often  the  erroneous  belief  is  based  upon  a  more 
conscientious  study  of  the  facts  than  the  right  belief.  I  do  not 
see  why  this  should  not  be  as  true  of  theological  beliefs  as  any 
others.  And  as  I  said  before,  I  do  not  care  to  protest  against 
that  which  is. 

Many  thanks  for  your  congratulations.  My  tour  was  very 
pleasant  and  taught  me  a  good  deal. — I  am  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

P.S. — You  are  at  liberty  to  make  what  use  you  please  of 
this  letter. 

4  Marlborough  Plac*,  Nov,  19,  1876. 

My  dear  Darwin — I  confess  I  have  less  sympathy  with  the 
half-and-half  sentimental  school  which  he  represents  than  I 
have  with  thoroughgoing  orthodoxy. 

If  we  are  to  assume  that  anybody  has  designedly  set  this 
wonderful  universe  going,  it  is  perfectly  clear  to  me  that  he  is 
no  more  entirely  benevolent  and  just  in  any  intelligible  sense 
of  the  words,  than  that  he  is  malevolent  and  unjust.  Infinite 
benevolence  need  not  have  invented  pain  and  sorrow  at  all — 
infinite  malevolence  would  very  easily  have  deprived  us  of  the 
large  measure  of  content  and  happiness  that  falls  to  our  lot. 
After  all,  Butler's  "Analogy"  is  unassailable,  and  there  is 
nothing  in  theological  dogmas  more  contradictory  to  our  moral 
sense,  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  facts  of  nature.  From  which, 
however,  the  Bishop's  conclusion  that  the  dogmas  are  true 
doesn't  follow. — With  best  remembrances  to  Mrs.  Darwin,  ever 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

This  incident  suggests  the  story  of  a  retort  he  once 
made  upon  what  he  considered  an  unseasonable  protest  in 
church,  a  story  which  exemplifies,  by  the  way,  his  strong 
sense  of  the  decencies  of  life,  appearing  elsewhere  in  his 
constant  respect  for  the  ordinary  conventions  and  his  dislike 
for  mere  Bohemianism  as  such. 

Once  in  a  country  house  he  was  sitting  at  dinner  next 
to  his  hostess,  a  lady  who,  as  will  sometimes  happen,  liked 
to  play  the  part  of  Lady  Arbitress  of  the  whole  neighbour- 
hood. She  told  him  how  much  she  disapproved  of  the 
Athanasian  Creed,  and  described  how  she  had  risen  and  left 


5o6  LIFE   OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxi 

the  village  church  when  the  parson  began  to  read  it ;  and 
thinking  to  gain  my  father's  assent,  she  turned  to  him  and 
said  graciously,  "  Now,  Mr.  Huxley,  don't  you  think  I  was 
quite  right  to  mark  my  disapproval?" 

"  My  dear  Lady "  he  replied,  "  I  should  as   soon 

think  of  rising  and  leaving  your  table  because  I  disapproved 
of  one  of  the  entrees." 


CHAPTER   XXXII 

1877 

In  this  year  he  delivered  lectures  and  addresses  on  the 
Geological  History  of  Birds,  at  the  Zoological  Society's 
Gardens,  June  7;  on  "Starfishes  and  their  Allies,"  at  the 
Royal  Institution,  March  7;  at  the  London  Institution, 
Dec.  17,  on  Belemnites  (a  subject  on  which  he  had  written 
in  1864,  and  which  was  doubtless  suggested  anew  by  his 
autumn  holiday  at  Whitby,  where  the  Lias  cliffs  are  full  of 
these  fossils) ;  at  the  Anthropological  Conference,  May  22, 
on  Elementary  Instruction  in  Physiology  (Coll,  Ess.  iii.  294), 
with  special  reference  to  the  recent  legislation  as  to  experi- 
ments on  living  animals ;  and  on  Technical  Education  to  the 
Working  Men's  Club  and  Institute,  December  i  (Coll,  Ess. 
iii.  404) :  a  perilous  subject,  indeed,  considering,  as  he  re- 
marks, that  "  any  candid  observer  of  the  phenomena  of 
modern  society  will  readily  admit  that  bores  must  be  classed 
among  the  enemies  of  the  human  race;  and  a  little  con- 
sideration will  probably  lead  him  to  th^  further  admission, 
that  no  species  of  that  extensive  genus  of  noxious  creatures 
is  more  objectionable  than  the  educational  bore.  ...  In  the 
course  of  the  last  ten  years,  to  go  back  no  farther,  I  am 
afraid  to  say  how  often  I  have  ventured  to  speak  of  edu- 
cation ;  indeed,  the  only  part  of  this  wide  region  into  which, 
as  yet,  I  have  not  adventured,  is  that  into  which  I  propose 
to  intrude  to-day." 

The  choice  of  subject  for  this  address  was  connected 
with  a  larger  campaign  for  the  establishment  of  technical 
education  on  a  proper  footing,  which  began  with  his  work 
on  the  School  Board,  or  was  this  year  brought  prominently 

507 


5o8 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxii 


before  the  public  by  another  address  delivered  at  the  Society 
of  Arts.  The  Clothworkers  Company  had  already  been  as- 
sisting the  Society  of  Arts  in  their  efforts  for  the  spread 
of  technical  education ;  and  in  July  1877  a  special  committee 
of  the  Guilds  applied  to  him,  amongst  half  a  dozen  others, 
to  furnish  them  with  a  report  as  to  the  objects  and  methods 
of  a  scheme  of  technical  education.  This  paper  fills  sixteen 
pages  in  the  Report  of  the  Livery  Companies'  Committee 
for  1878.  The  fundamental  principles  on  which  he  bases 
his  practical  recommendations  are  contained  in  the  following 
paragraph : — 

It  appears  to  me  that  if  every  person  who  is  engaged  in  an 
industry  had  access  to  instruction  in  the  scientific  principles  on 
which  that  industry  is  based;  in  the  mode  of  applying  these 
principles  to  practice;  in  the  actual  use  of  the  means  and  appli- 
ances employed;  in  the  language  of  the  people  who  know  as 
much  about  the  matter  as  we  do  ourselves;  and  lastly,  in  the 
art  of  keeping  accounts,  Technical  Education  would  have  done 
all  that  can  be  required  of  it. 

And  his  suggestion  about  buildings  was  at  once  adopted 
by  the  Committee,  namely,  that  they  should  be  erected  at  a 
future  date,  regard  being  had  primarily  rather  to  what  is 
wanted  in  the  inside  than  what  will  look  well  from  the 
outside. 

Now  the  Guilds  formed  a  very  proper  body  to  set  such 
a  scheme  on  foot,  because  only  such  wealthy  and  influential 
members  of  the  first  mercantile  city  in  the  world  could 
afford  to  let  themselves  be  despised  and  jeered  at  for  pro- 
fessing to  teach  English  manufacturers  and  English  mer- 
chants that  they  needed  to  be  taught ;  and  to  spend  £25,000 
a  year  towards  that  end  for  some  time  without  apparent 
result. 

That  they  eventually  succeeded,  is  due  no  little  to  the 
careful  plans  drawn  out  by  Huxley.  He  may  be  described 
as  "  really  the  engineer  of  the  City  and  Guilds  Institute ;  for 
without  his  advice,"  declared  one  of  the  leading  members, 
"  we  should  not  have  known  what  to  have  done." 

At  the  same  time  he  warned  them  against  indiscriminate 
zeal ;  *'  though  under-instruction  is  a  bad  thing,  it  is  not 


i877  TECHNICAL   EDUCATION  509 

impossible  that  over-instruction  may  be  worse."  The  aim  of 
the  Livery  Companies  should  specially  be  to  aid  the  practical 
teaching  of  science,  so  that  at  bottom  the  question  turns 
mainly  on  the  supply  of  teachers. 

On  December  11,  1879,  he  found  a  further  opportu- 
nity of  urging  the  cause  of  Technical  Education.  A  lecture 
on  Apprenticeships  was  delivered  before  the  Society  of  Arts 
by  Professor  Silvanus  Thompson.  Speaking  after  the  lec- 
ture (see  report  in  Nature,  1879,  p.  139)  he  discussed  the 
necessity  of  supplying  the  place  of  the  old  apprenticeships 
by  educating  children  in  the  principles  of  their  particular 
crafts,  beyond  the  time  when  they  were  forced  to  enter  the 
workshops.  This  could  be  done  by  establishing  schools  in 
each  centre  of  industry,  connected  with  a  central  institution, 
such  as  was  to  be  found  in  Paris  or  Zurich.  As  for  com- 
plaints of  deficient  teaching  of  handicrafts  in  the  Board 
Schools,  it  was  more  important  for  them  to  make  intelligent 
men  than  skilled  workmen,  as  again  was  indicated  in  the 
French  system. 

As  President  of  the  Royal  Society,  he  was  on  the  above- 
mentioned  Committee  of  the  Guilds  from  1883  to  1885,  and 
on  December  10,  1883,  distributed  the  prizes  in  connection 
with  the  institution  in  the  Clothworkers'  Hall.  After  sketch- 
ing the  inception  of  the  whole  scheme,  he  referred  to  the 
Central  Institute,  then  in  course  of  building  (begun  in  1882, 
it  was  finished  in  1884;  the  Technical  College,  Finsbury, 
was  older  by  a  year),  and  spoke  of  the  difficulties  in  the 
way  of  organising  such  an  institution : — 

That  building  is  simply  the  body,  not  the  flesh  and  bones,  but 
the  bricks  and  stones,  of  the  Central  Institute,  and  the  business 
upon  which  Sir  F.  Bramwell  and  my  other  colleagues  on  the 
Committee  have  been  so  much  occupied,  is  the  making  a  soul 
for  this  body ;  and  I  can  assure  you  making  a  soul  for  anything 
is  an  amazingly  difficult  operation.  You  are  always  in  danger 
of  doing  as  the  man  in  the  story  of  Frankenstein  did,  and  making 
something  which  will  eventually  devour  you  instead  of  being 
useful  to  you. 

And  here  I  may  give  a  letter  which  refers  to  the  move- 
ment for  technical  education,  and  the  getting  the  City  Com- 


sip 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxu 


panics  under  way  in  the  matter.  In  the  words  of  Mr.  George 
Howell,  M.P.,*  it  has  an  additional  interest  "  as  indicating- 
the  nature  of  his  own  epitaph  '* ;  as  a  man  "  whose  highest 
ambition  ever  was  to  uplift  the  masses  of  the  people  and 
promote  their  welfare  intellectually,  socially,  and  indus- 
trially." 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  Jan,  2,  i88n. 

Dear  Mr.  Howell — Your  letter  is  a  welcome  New  Year's 
gift.  There  are  two  things  I  really  care  about — one  is  the 
progress  of  scientific  thought,  and  the  other  is  the  bettering  of 
the  condition  of  the  masses  of  the  people  by  bettering  them  in 
the  way  of  lifting  themselves  out  of  the  misery  which  has 
hitherto  been  the  lot  of  the  majority  of  them.  Posthumous  fame 
is  not  particularly  attractive  to  me,  but,  if  I  am  to  be  remem- 
bered at  all,  I  would  rather  it  should  be  as  "a  man  who  did 
his  best  to  help  the  people"  than  by  other  title.  So  you  see 
it  is  no  small  pleasure  and  encouragement  to  me  to  find  that 
I  have  been,  and  am,  of  any  use  in  this  direction. 

Ever  since  my  experience  on  the  School  Board,  I  have  been 
convinced  that  I  should  lose  rather  than  gain  by  entering  direct- 
ly into  politics.  .  .  .  But  I  suppose  I  have  some  ten  years  of 
activity  left  in  me,  and  you  may  depend  upon  it  I  shall  lose  no 
chance  of  striking  a  blow  for  the  cause  I  have  at  heart.  I 
thought  the  time  had  come  the  other  day  at  the  Society  of  Arts, 
and  the  event  proves  I  was  not  mistaken.  The  animal  is  mov- 
ing, and  by  a  judicious  exhibition  of  carrots  in  front  and  kicks 
behind,  we  shall  get  him  into  a  fine  trot  presently.  In  the  mean- 
time do  not  let  the  matter  rest.  .  .  .  The  (City)  companies 
should  be  constantly  reminded  that  a  storm  is  brewing.  There 
are  excellent  men  among  them,  who  want  to  do  what  is  right, 
and  need  help  against  the  sluggards  and  reactionaries.  It  will 
be  best  for  me  to  be  quiet  for  a  while,  but  you  will  understand 
that  I  am  watching  for  the  turn  of  events. — I  am,  yours  very 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

This  summer,  too,  he  delivered  a  course  on  Biology  for 
Teachers  at  South  Kensington,  and  published  not  only  his 
American  Addresses,  but  also  the  Physiography,  founded 
upon  the  course  delivered  seven  weeks  before.  The  book, 
of  which  3386  copies  were  sold  in  the  first  six  weeks,  was 
fruitful  in  two  ways ;  it  showed  that  a  geographical  subject 

♦  Who  sent  it  to  the  Times  (July  3, 1895)  just  after  Huxley's  death. 


i877  SCOTTISH    UNIVERSITIES  COMMISSION  51 1 

could  be  invested  with  interest,  and  it  set  going  what  was 
almost  a  new  branch  of  teaching  in  natural  science,  even 
in  Germany,  the  starting  place  of  most  educational  methods, 
where  it  was  immediately  proposed  to  bring  out  an  adapta- 
tion of  the  book,  substituting,  e.g,  the  Elbe  for  the  Thames, 
as  a  familiar  example  of  river  action. 

He  was  immensely  pleased  by  a  letter  from  Mr.  John 
Morley,  telling  how  his  step-son,  a  boy  of  non-bookish 
tastes,  had  been  taken  with  it.  "  My  step-son  was  reading 
it  the  other  night.  I  said,  *  Isn't  it  better  to  read  a  novel 
before  going  to  bed,  instead  of  worrying  your  head  over 
a  serious  book  like  that? '  '  Oh,'  said  he,  *  I'm  at  an  awfully 
interesting  part,  and  I  can't  leave  off.'  "  It  was,  Mr.  Morley 
continued,  "  the  way  of  making  Nature,  as  she  comes  before 
us  every  day,  interesting  and  intelligible  to  young  folks." 

To  this  he  replied  on  December  14: — 

I  shall  get  as  vain  as  a  peacock  if  discreet  folk  like  you  say 
such  pretty  things  to  me  as  you  do  about  the  Physiography, 

But  it  is  very  pleasant  to  me  to  find  that  I  have  succeeded 
in  what  I  tried  to  do.  I  gave  the  lectures  years  ago  to  show 
what  I  thought  was  the  right  way  to  lead  young  people  to  the 
study  of  nature — ^but  nobody  would  follow  suit — so  now  I  have 
tried  what  the  book  will  do. 

Your  step-son  is  a  boy  of  sense,  and  I  hope  he  may  be  taken 
as  a  type  of  the  British  public ! 

A  good  deal  of  time  was  taken  up  in  the  first  half  of  the 
year  by  the  Scottish  Universities  Commission,  which  neces- 
sitated his  attendance  in  Edinburgh  the  last  week  in  Feb- 
ruary, the  first  week  in  April,  and  the  last  week  in  July. 
He  had  hoped  to  finish  off  the  necessary  business  at  the 
first  of  these  meetings,  but  no  sooner  had  he  arrived  in 
Edinburgh,  after  a  pleasant  journey  down  with  J.  A.  Froude, 
than  he  learned  that  "  the  chief  witness  we  were  to  have 
examined  to-day,  and  whose  due  evisceration  was  one  of 
the  objects  of  my  coming,  has  telegraphed  to  say  he  can't 
be  here."  Owing  to  this  and  to  the  enforced  absence  of  the 
judges  on  the  Commission  from  some  of  the  sittings,  it  was 
found  necessary  to  have  the  additional  meetings  at  Easter, 
much  to  his  disgust.    He  writes : — 


512 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxii 


I  am  sorry  to  say  I  shall  have  to  come  here  again  in  Blaster 
week.  It  is  the  only  time  the  Lord  President  is  free  from  his 
courts,  and  although  we  all  howled  privately,  there  was  no  help 
for  it.  Whether  we  finish  then  or  not  will  depend  on  the  decision 
of  the  Government,  as  to  our  taking  up  the  case  of  you  trouble- 
some women,  who  want  admission  into  the  University  (very 
rightly  too  I  think).  If  we  have  to  go  into  this  question  it  will 
involve  the  taking  of  new  evidence  and  no  end  of  bother.  1 
find  my  colleagues  very  reasonable,  and  I  hope  some  good  may* 
be  done,  that  is  the  only  consolation. 

I  went  out  with  Blackie  last  evening  to  dine  with  the 
Skeltons,  at  a  pretty  place  called  the  Hermitage,  about  three 
miles  from  here.  .  .  .  Blackie  and  I  walked  home  with  snow  on 
the  ground  and  a  sharp  frost.  I  told  you  it  would  turn  cold 
as  soon  as  I  got  here,  but  I  am  none  the  worse. 

It  was  just  the  same  in  April : — 

It  is  quite  cold  here  as  usual,  and  there  was  ice  on  the  ponds 
we  passed  this  morning.  ...  I  am  much  better  lodged  than  I 
was  last  time,  for  the  same  thanks  to  John  Bruce,  but  I  do 
believe  that  the  Edinburgh  houses  are  the  coldest  in  the  uni- 
verse. In  spite  of  a  good  breakfast  and  a  good  fire,  the  half 
of  me  that  is  writing  to  you  is  as  cold  as  charity. 

April  4. — We  toil  at  the  Commission  every  day,  and  don't 
make  any  rapid  progress.  An  awful  fear  creeps  over  me  that 
we  shall  not  finish  this  bout. 

While  he  was  in  Edinburgh  for  the  third  time,  his  at- 
tention was  called  to  an  article  in  the  Echo,  the  organ  of  the 
anti-vivisection  party.     He  writes: — 

The  Echo  is  pretty.  It  is  one  of  a  long  series  of  articles 
from  the  same  hand,  but  I  don't  think  they  hurt  anybody  and 
they  evidently  please  the  writer.  For  some  reason  or  other 
they  have  not  attacked  me  yet,  but  I  suppose  my  turn  will  come. 

Again : — 

Thank  you  for  sending  me  John  Bright's  speeches.  They 
are  very  good,  but  hardly  up  to  his  old  mark  of  eloquence.  Some 
parts  are  very  touching. 

His  health  was  improving,  as  he  notes  with  satisfaction : 

Every  day  this  week  we  have  had  about  four  hours  of  the 
Commission,  and  I  have  dined  out  four  days  out  of  the  six. 


1877  HONORARY   DEGREE   FOR   DARWIN  513 

But  I'm  no  the  waur,  and  the  late  dinners  have  not  been  visited 
by  fits  of  morning  blue  devils.  So  I  am  in  hopes  that  I  am 
getting  back  to  the  normal  state  that  Clark  prophesied  for  me. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  London,  N.W., 
April  29,  1877. 

My  dear  Skelton— Best  thanks  for  your  second  edition. 
You  paint  the  system*  in  such  favourable  colours,  that  I  am 
thinking  of  taking  advantage  of  it  for  my  horde  of  "young 
barbarians."  I  am  sure  Scotch  air  would  be  of  service  to  them 
— and  in  after-life  they  might  have  the  inestimable  advantage  of 
a  quasi- Scotch  nationality — that  greatest  of  all  practical  ad- 
vantages in  Britain. 

We  are  to  sit  again  in  the  end  of  July  when  Mrs.  Skelton 
and  you  if  you  are  wise,  will  be  making  holiday. 

Your  invitation  is  most  tempting,  and  if  I  had  no  work  to  do 
I  should  jump  at  it. 

But  alas !  I  shall  have  a  deal  of  work,  and  I  must  go  to  my 
Patmos  in  George  Street.  Ingrained  laziness  is  the  bane  of  my 
existence ;  and  you  don't  suppose  that  with  the  sun  shining  down 
into  your  bosky  dell,  and  Mrs.  Skelton  radiant,  and  Froude  and 
yourself  nicotiant,  I  am  such  a  Philistine  as  to  do  a  stroke  of 
work  ? — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

From  Edinburgh  he  went  to  St.  Andrews  to  make  ar- 
rangements for  his  elder  son  to  go  to  the  University  there 
as  a  student  the  following  winter.  Then  he  paid  a  visit  to 
Sir  W.  Armstrong  in  Northumberland,  afterwards  spending 
a  month  at  Whitby.  His  holiday  work  consisted  in  a  great 
part  of  the  article  on  "  Evolution  "  for  the  Encyclopcedia 
Britannica,  which  is  noted  as  finished  on  October  24,  though 
not  published  till  the  next*  year. 

In  November  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  was  con- 
ferred upon  Charles  Darwin  at  Cambridge,  "a  great  step 
for  Cambridge,  though  it  may  not  seem  much  in  itself,"  he 
writes  to  Dohm,  November  21.  In  the  evening  after  the 
public  ceremony  there  was  a  dinner  of  the  Philosophical 
Club,  at  which  he  spoke  in  praise  of  Darwin's  services  to 
science.    Darwin  himself  was  unable  to  be  present,  but  re- 

♦  i.e,  of  Scotch  education. 


514  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxii 

ceived  an  enthusiastic  account  of  the  proceedings  from  his 
son,  and  wrote  to  thank  Huxley,  who  replied : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Nov.  21,  1877. 
My  dear  Darwin — Nothing  ever  gave  me  greater  pleasure 
than  the  using  the  chance  of  speaking  my  mind  about  you  and 
your  work  which  was  afforded  me  at  the  dinner  the  other  night. 
I  said  not  a  word  beyond  what  I  believe  to  be  strictly  accurate : 
and,  please  Sir,  I  didn't  sneer  at  anybody.  There  was  only  a 
little  touch  of  the  whip  at  starting,  and  it  was  so  tied  round  with 
ribbons  that  it  took  them  some  time  to  find  out  where  the  flick 
had  hit.  T.  H.  Huxley. 

He  writes  to  his  wife : — 

I  will  see  if  I  can  recollect  the  speech.  I  made  a  few  notes 
sitting  in  Dewar's  room  before  the  dinner.  But  as  usual  I  did 
not  say  some  things  I  meant  to  say,  and  said  others  that  came 
up  on  the  spur  of  the  moment. 

And  again : — 

Please  I  didn't  say  that  Reaumur  was  the  other  greatest 
scientific  man  since  Aristotle.  But  I  said  that  in  a  certain 
character  of  his  work  he  was  the  biggest  man  between  Aristotle 
and  Darwin.  I  really  must  write  out  an  "  authorised  version  " 
of  my  speech.  I  hear  the  Latin  oration  is  to  be  in  Nature  this 
week,  and  Lockyer  wanted  me  to  give  him  the  heads  of  my 
speech,  but  I  did  not  think  it  would  be  proper  to  do  so,  and 
refused.  I  have  written  out  my  speech  as  well  as  I  can  recollect 
it.  I  do  not  mind  any  friend  seeing  it,  but  you  must  not  let  it 
get  about  as  the  dinner  was  a  private  one. 

The  notes  of  his  speech  run  as  follows : — 

Mr.  President — I  rise  with  pleasure  and  with  alacrity  to 
respond  to  the  toast  which  you  have  just  proposed,  and  I  may 
say  that  I  consider  one  of  the  greatest  honours  which  have  be- 
fallen me,  to  be  called  upon  to  represent  my  distinguished  friend 
Mr.  Darwin  upon  this  occasion.  I  say  to  represent  Mr.  Darwin, 
for  I  cannot  hope  to  personate  him,  or  to  say  all  that  would  be 
dictated  by  a  mind  conspicuous  for  its  powerful  humility  and 
strong  gentleness. 

Mr.  Darwin's  work  had  fully  earned  the  distinction  you 
have  to-day  conferred  upon  him  four  and  twenty  years  ago; 
but  I  doubt  not  that  he  would  have  been  found  in  that  circum- 


i877  DARWIN'S  DISTINCTIVE   MERITS  515 

stance  an  exemplification  of  the  wise  foresight  of  his  revered 
intellectual  mother.  Instead  of  offering  her  honours  when  they 
ran  a  chance  of  being  crushed  beneath  the  accumulated  marks 
of  approbation  of  the  whole  civilised  world,  the  University  has 
waited  until  the  trophy  was  finished,  and  has  crowned  the  edifice 
with  the  delicate  wreath  of  academic  appreciation. 

This  is  what  I  suppose  Mr.  Darwin  might  have  said  had  he 
been  happily  able  to  occupy  my  place.  Let  me  now  speak  in  my 
own  person  and  in  obedience  to  your  suggestion,  let  me  state  as 
briefly  as  possible  what  appear  to  me  to  be  Mr.  Darwin's  dis- 
tinctive merits. 

From  the  time  of  Aristotle  to  the  present  day  I  know  of  but 
one  man  who  has  shown  himself  Mr.  Darwin's  equal  in  one  field 
of  research — and  that  is  Reaumur.  In  the  breadth  of  range  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  investigations  upon  the  ways  and  works  of  ani- 
mals and  plants,  in  the  minute  patient  accuracy  of  his  observa- 
tions, and  in  the  philosophical  ideas  which  have  glided  them,  I 
know  of  no  one  who  is  to  be  placed  in  the  same  rank  with  him 
except  Reaumur. 

Secondly,  looking  back  through  the  same  long  period  of 
scientific  history,  I  know  of  but  one  man,  Lyonnet,  who  not  being 
from  his  youth  a  trained  anatomist,  has  published  such  an 
admirable  minute  anatomical  research  as  is  contained  in  Mr. 
Darwin's  work  on  the  Cirripedes. 

Thirdly,  in  that  region  which  lies  between  Geology  and 
Biology,  and  is  occupied  by  the  problem  of  the  influence  of  life 
on  the  structure  of  the  globe,  no  one,  so  far  as  I  know,  has  done 
a  more  brilliant  and  far-reaching  piece  of  work  than  the  famous 
book  upon  Coral  ^efs. 

I  add  to  these^s  incidental  trifles  the  numerous  papers  on 
Geology,  and  that  most  delightful  of  popular  scientific  books, 
the  Journal  of  a  Naturalist,  and  I  think  I  have  made  out  my 
case  for  the  justification  of  to-day's  proceedings. 

But  I  have  omitted  something.  There  is  the  Origin  of 
Species,  and  all  that  has  followed  it  from  the  same  marvellously 
fertile  brain. 

Most  people  know  Mr.  Darwin  only  as  the  author  of  this 
work,  and  of  the  form  of  evolutional  doctrine  which  it  advocates. 
I  desire  to  say  nothing  about  that  doctrine.  My  friend  Dr. 
Humphry  has  said  that  the  University  has  by  to-day's  proceed- 
ings committed  itself  to  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  I  can  only 
say  "  I  am  very  glad  to  hear  it."  But  whether  that  doctrine  be 
true  or  whether  it  be  false,  I  wish  to  express  the  deliberate 


5i6  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxii 

opinion,  that  from  Aristotle's  great  summary  of  the  Biological 
knowledge  of  his  time  down  to  the  present  day,  there  is  nothing 
comparable  to  the  Origin  of  Species,  as  a  connected  survey  of 
the  phenomena  of  life  permeated  and  vivified  by  a  central  ioea- 
In  remote  ages  the  historian  of  science  will  dwell  upon  it  as 
the  starting-point  of  the  Biology  of  his  present  and  our  future. 

My  friend  Dr.  Humphry  has  adverted  to  somebody  about 
whom  I  know  nothing,  who  says  that  the  exact  and  critical 
studies  pursued  in  this  University  are  ill-calculated  to  preserve 
a  high  tone  of  mind. 

I  presume  that  this  saying  must  proceed  from  some  one 
wholly  unacquainted  with  Cambridge.  Whoever  he  may  be,  I 
beg  him,  if  he  can,  to  make  the  acquaintance  of  Charles  Darwin. 

In  Mr.  Darwin's  name  I  beg  leave  to  thank  you  for  the 
honour  you  have  done  him. 

It  happened  that  the  quadrennial  election  of  a  Lord 
Rector  at  St.  Andrews  University  fell  in  this  year,  and  on 
behalf  of  a  number  of  students,  Huxley  received  a  telegram 
from  his  son,  now  newly  entered  at  St.  Andrews,  asking 
him  to  stand.    He  writes  to  his  wife : — 

That  boy  of  yours  has  just  sent  me  a  telegram,  which  I 
enclose.  I  sent  back  message  to  say  that  as  a  Commissioner  on 
the  Scotch  Universities  I  could  not  possibly  stand.  The  cockerel 
is  beginning  to  crow  early.  I  do  believe  that  to  please  the  boy 
I  should  have  assented  to  it  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  R.  Com- 
mission. 

Apropos  of  controversies  (November  23) 

We  had  a  grand  discussion  at  the  Royal  Society  last 
night  between  Tyndall  and  Burdon  Sanderson.  The  place  was 
crammed,  and  we  had  a  late  sitting.  I'm  not  sure,  however, 
that  we  had  got  much  further  at  the  end  than  at  the  beginning, 
which  is  a  way  controversies  have. 

The  following  story  is  worth  recording,  as  an  illustration 
not  only  of  the  way  in  which  Huxley  would  give  what  help 
was  in  his  power  to  another  man  of  science  in  distress,  but 
of  the  ready  aid  proffered  on  this,  as  on  many  other  occa- 
sions, by  a  wealthy  northern  merchant  who  was  interested 
in  science.  A  German  scientific  worker  in  England,  whom 
we  will  call  H.,  had  fallen  into  distress,  and  applied  to  him 


i877  A   FRIEND   IN   NEED  517 

for  help,  asking  if  some  work  could  not  be  put  in  his  way. 
Huxley  could  think  of  nothing  immediate  but  to  suggest 
some  lessons  in  German  literature  to  his  children,  though 
in  fact  they  were  well  provided  for  with  a  German  govern- 
ess; nevertheless  he  thought  it  a  proper  occasion  to  avail 
himself  of  his  friend's  offer  to  give  help  in  deserving  cases. 
He  writes  to  his  wife : — 

I  made  up  my  mind  to  write  to  X.  the  day  before  yesterday ; 
this  morning  by  return  of  post  he  sends  me  a  cheque  not  only 
for  the  £60  which  I  said  H.  needed,  but  £5  over  for  his  present 
needs  with  a  charming  letter. 

It  came  in  the  nick  of  time,  as  H.  came  an  hour  or  two 
after  it  arrived,  and  with  many  apologies  told  me  he  was  quite 
penniless.  The  poor  old  fellow  was  quite  overcome  when  I 
told  him  how  matters  stood,  and  it  was  characteristic  that  as 
soon  as  he  got  his  breath  again,  he  wanted  to  know  when  he 
would  begin  teaching  the  children !  I  sent  him  to  get  an  order 
on  the  Naples  bank  for  the  discharge  of  his  debt  there.  X.*s 
express  stipulation  was  that  his  name  should  not  be  mentioned, 
so  mind  you  say  not  a  word  about  his  most  kind  and  gener- 
ous act. 

The  following  letters  of  miscellaneous  interest  were 
written  in  this  year : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Nov.  21,  1877. 

My  dear  Morley — I  am  always  at  the  command  of  the 
Fortnightly  so  long  as  you  are  editor,  but  I  don't  think  that  the 
Belemnite  *  business  would  do  for  you.  The  story  would  hardly 
be  intelligible  without  illustrations. 

There  are  two  things  I  am  going  to  do  which  may  be  more 
to  the  purpose.  One  is  a  screed  on  Technical  Education  which 
I  am  going  to  feive  to  the  Working  Men's  Union  on  the  ist 
December. 

The  other  is  a  sort  of  feloge  on  Harvey  at  the  Royal  Insti- 
tution in  March  apropos  of  his  300th  birthday — which  was  All- 
fools  Day. 

You  shall  have  either  of  these  you  like,  but  I  advise  Harvey; 
as  if  I  succeed  in  doing  what  I  shall  aim  at  it  will  be  interesting. 

Why  the  deuce  do  you  live  at  Brighton  ?  St.  John's  Wood 
is  far  less  cockneyfied,  and  its  fine  and  Alpine  air  would  be 

*  The  lecture  at  the  London  Institution  mentioned  above. 


5i8  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY  chap,  xxxii 

much  better  for  you,  and  I  believe  for  Mrs.  Morley,  than  the 
atmosphere  of  the  melancholy  main,  the  effects  of  which  on  the 
human  constitution  have  been  so  well  expounded  by  that  emi- 
nent empiric,  Dr.  Dizzy. 

Anyhow,  I  wish  we  could  see  something  of  you  now  and 
then. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Darwin  got  his  degree  with  great  iclat  on  Saturday.  I  had 
to  return  thanks  for  his  health  at  the  dinner  of  the  Philosophical 
Society ;  and  oh  !  I  chaffed  the  dons  so  sweetly. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  Nav.  27,  1877. 

My  dear  Morley — You  shall  have  both  the  articles — if  it  is 
only  that  I  may  enjoy  the  innocent  pleasure  of  Knowles'  face 
when  I  let  him  know  what  has  become  of  them. 

Stormy  ocean,  forsooth  !  I  back  the  storm  and  rain  through 
which  I  came  home  to-night  against  anything  London-super- 
mare  has  to  show. 

I  will  send  the  MS.  to  Virtue  as  soon  as  it  is  in  a  reasonable 
state. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  S.W.,/an.  8,  1878. 

My  dear  Morley — Many  thanks  for  the  cheque.  In  my 
humble  judgment  it  is  quite  as  much  as  the  commodity  is  worth. 

It  was  a  great  pleasure  to  us  all  to  have  you  with  us  on  New 
Year's  Day.  My  wife  claims  it  as  her  day,  and  I  am  not  sup- 
posed to  know  anything  about  the  guests  except  Spencer  and 
Tyndall.  None  but  the  very  elect  are  invited  to  the  sacred 
feast — so  you  see  where  you  stand  among  the  predestined  who 
cannot  fall  away  from  the  state  of  grace. 

I  have  not  seen  Spencer  in  such  good  form  and  good  humour 
combined  for  an  age. 

I  am  working  away  at  Harvey,  and  will  send  the  MS.  to 
Virtue's  as  soon  as  I  am  sufficiently  forward. — Ever  yours  very 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Dec.  9,  1877. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  am  so  sorry  to  have  been  out  when 
Mrs.  Tyndall  called  to-day.  By  what  we  heard  at  the  x  on 
Thursday,  I  imagined  you  were  practically  all  right  again,  or  I 
should  have  been  able  to  look  after  you  to-day. 

But  what  I  bother  you  with  this  note  for  is  to  beg  you  not  to 
lecture  at  the  London  Institution  to-morrow,  but  to  let  me 


i877  "BOTTLED   LIFE"  519 

change  days  with  you,  and  so  give  yourself  a  week  to  recover. 
And  if  you  are  seedy,  then  I  am  quite  ready  to  give  them  another 
lecture  on  the  Hokypotamus  or  whatever  else  may  turn  up. 

But  don't  go  and  exert  yourself  in  your  present  condition. 
These  severe  colds  have  often  nothing  very  tangible  about  them, 
but  are  not  to  be  trifled  with  when  folks  are  past  fifty. 

Let  me  have  an  answer  to  say  that  I  may  send  a  telegram  to 
Nicholson  first  thing  to-morrow  morning  to  say  that  I  will  lec- 
ture vice  you.  My  "  bottled  life,"  as  Hutton  calls  it  in  the  Spec- 
tator* this  week,  is  quite  ready  to  go  off. 

Now  be  a  sane  man  and  take  my  advice. — ^Ever  yours  very 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

*  The  Spectator  for  Dec.  8,  1877,  began  an  article  thus : — **  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  delivered  a  very  amusing  address  last  Saturday  at  the 
Society  of  Arts,  on  the  very  unpromising  subject  of  technical  educa- 
tion; but  we  believe  that  if  Professor  Huxley  were  to  become  the 
President  of  the  Social  Science  Association,  or  of  the  International 
Statistical  Congress,  he  would  still  be  amusing,  so  much  bottled  life 
does  he  infuse  into  the  driest  topic  on  which  human  beings  ever  con- 
trived to  prose." 


34 


CHAPTER    XXXIII 

1878 

The  year  1878  was  the  tercentenary  of  Harvey's  birth, 
and  Huxley  was  very  busy  with  the  life  and  work  of  that 
great  physician.  He  spoke  at  the  memorial  meeting  at  the 
College  of  Physicians  (July  18),  he  gave  a  lecture  on  Harvey 
at  the  Royal  Institution  on  January  25,  afterwards  published 
in  Nature  and  the  Fortnightly  RevieWy  and  intended  to  write 
a  book  on  him  in  a  projected  English  Men  of  Science  series 
(see  p.  536). 

I  am  very  glad  you  like  "  Harvey "  (he  writes  to  Prof. 
Baynes  on  Feb.  11).  He  is  one  of  the  biggest  scientific  minds 
we  have  had.  I  expect  to  get  well  vilipended  not  only  by  the 
anti-vivisection  folk,  for  the  most  of  whom  I  have  a  hearty  con- 
tempt, but  apropos  of  Bacon.  I  have  been  oppressed  by  the 
humbug  of  the  "  Baconian  Induction  "  all  my  life,  and  at  last 
the  worm  has  turned. 

Now  in  this  lecture  he  showed  that  Harvey  employed 
vivisection  to  establish  the  doctrine  of  the  circulation  of  the 
blood,  and  furthermore,  that  he  taught  this  doctrine  before 
the  Novum  Organum  was  published,  and  that  his  subsequent 
Exercitatio  displays  no  trace  of  being  influenced  by  Bacon's 
work.  After  glancing  at  the  superstitious  reverence  for  the 
"  Baconian  Induction,"  he  pointed  out  Bacon's  ignorance  of 
the  progress  of  science  up  to  his  time,  and  his  inability  to 
divine  the  importance  of  what  he  knew  by  hearsay  of  the 
work  of  Copernicus,  or  Kepler,  or  Galileo ;  of  Gilbert,  his 
conteniporary,  or  of  Galen ;  and  wound  up  by  quoting  Ellis's 
severe  judgment  of  Bacon  in  the  "General  Preface  to  the 
Philosophic  Works,  in  Spedding's  classical  edition  (p.  38)  :— 
520 


i878  THE  BACONIAN   METHOD  521 

"  That  his  method  is  impracticable  cannot,  I  think,  be  de- 
nied, if  we  reflect,  not  only  that  it  never  has  produced  any 
result,  but  also  that  the  process  by  which  scientific  truths 
have  been  established  cannot  be  50  presented  as  even  to 
appear  to  be  in  accordance  with  it." 

How  early  this  conviction  had  forced  itself  upon  him,  I 
cannot  say;  but  it  was  certainly  not  later  than  1859,  when 
the  Origin  of  Species  was  constantly  met  with  "  Oh,  but  this 
is  contrairy  to  the  Baconian  method."  He  had  long  felt 
what  he  expresses  most  clearly  in  the  "  Progress  of  Science  " 
(Coll.  Ess.  i.  46-57)  that  Bacon's  "  majestic  eloquence  and 
fervid  vaticinations  "  which  "  drew  th^  attention  of  all  the 
world  to  the  *  new  birth  of  Time ' "  were  yet,  for  all  prac- 
tical results  on  discovery,  "  a  magnificent  failure."  The 
desire  for  '*  fruits  "  has  not  been  the  great  motive  of  the 
discoverer;  nor  has  discovery  waited  upon  collective  re- 
search. "  Those  who  refuse  to  go  beyond  fact,"  he  writes, 
"  rarely  get  as  far  as  fact ;  and  any  one  who  has  studied  the 
history  of  science  knows  that  almost  every  great  step  therein 
has  been  made  by  the  '  anticipation  of  nature,'  that  is,  by 
the  invention  of  hypotheses,  which,  though  verifiable,  often 
had  very  little  foundation  to  start  with;  and,  not  unfre- 
quently,  in  spite  of  a  long  career  of  usefulness,  turned  out 
to  be  wholly  erroneous  in  the  long-run." 

Thus  he  had  been  led  to  a  settled  disbelief  in  Bacon's 
scientific  greatness,  that  reasoned  "  prejudice  "  against  which 
Spedding  himself  was  moved  to  write  twice  in  defence  of 
Bacon.  In  his  first  letter  he  criticised  a  passage  in  the 
lecture  touching  this  question.  On  the  one  hand,  he  re- 
marks, **  Bacon  would  probably  have  agreed  with  you  as 
to  his  pretensions  as  a  scientific  discoverer  (he  calls  him- 
self a  bellman  to  call  other  wits  together,  or  a  trumpeter, 
or  a  maker  of  bricks  for  others  to  build  with)."  On  the 
other  hand,  he  asks,  ought  a  passage  from  a  fragment — the 
Temporis  partus  masculus — unpublished  irf  Bacon's  lifetime, 
to  be  treated  as  one  of  his  representative  opinions  ? 

In  his  second  letter  he  adduces,  on  other  grounds,  his 
own  more  favourable  impression  of  Bacon's  philosophical 
influence.    A  peculiar. interest  of  this  letter  lies  in  its  testi- 


522  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxxin 

mony  to  the  influence  of  Huxley's  writings  even  on  his  elder 
contemporaries. 

From  James  Spedding 

•^  Feb.  I,  1878. 

.  .  .  When  you  admit  that  you  study  Bacon  with  a  preju- 
dice, you  mean  of  course  an  unfavourable  opinion  previously 
formed  on  sufficient  grounds.     Now  I  am  myself  supposed  to 
have  studied  him  with  a  prejudice  the  other  way:  but  this  I 
cannot  admit,  in  any  sense  of  the  word;  for  when  I  first  made 
his  acquaintance  I  had  no  opinion  or  feeling  about  him  at  all 
— more  than  the  ordinary  expectation  of  a  young  man  to  find 
what  he  is  told  to  look  for.      My  earliest  impression   of  his 
character  came  probably  from  Thompson — ^whose  portrait  of 
him,  except  as  touched  and  softened  by  the  tenderer  hand  of 
"  the  sweet-souled  poet  of  the  Seasons/'  did  not  differ  from  the 
ordinary  one.     It  was  not  long  indeed  before  I  did  begin  to 
form  an  opinion  of  my  own ;  one  of  those  a//^- judgments  whidi 
are  liable  to  be  mistaken  for  prejudices  by  those  who  judge 
differently,  and  which,  being  formed,  do,  no  doubt,  tell  upon  the 
balance.     For  it  was  not  long  before  I  found  myself  indebted 
to  him  for  the  greatest  benefit  probably  that  any  man,  living  or 
dead,  can  confer  on  another.    In  my  school  and  college  days  I 
had  been  betrayed  by  an  ambition  to  excel  in  themes  and  decla- 
mations into  the  study,  admiration,  and  imitation  of  the  rheto- 
ricians.   In  the  course  of  my  last  long  vacation — ^the  autumn  of 
1830 — I  was  inspired  with  a  new  ambition,  namely,  to  think 
justly  about  everything  which  I  thought  about  at  all,  and  to  act 
accordingly ;  a  conviction  for  which  I  cannot  cease  to  feel  grate- 
ful, and  which  I  distinctly  trace  to  the  accident  of  having  in 
the  beginning  of  that  same  vacation  given  two  shillings  at 
a  second-hand  bookstall  for  a  little  volume  of  Dove's  classics, 
containing  the  Advancement  of  Learning.    And  if  I  could  tell 
you  how  many  superlatives  I  have  since  that  time  degraded 
into  the  positive;  how  many  innumerables  and  infinites  I  have 
replaced  by  counted  numbers  and  estimated  quantities;  how 
many  assumptions,  important  to  the  argument  in  hand,  I  have 
withdrawn  because  I  found  on  more  consideration  that  the  fact 
might  be  explained  otherwise;  and  how  many  effective  epithets 
I  have  discarded  when  I  found  that  I  could  not  fully  verify 
them;  you  would  think  it  no  less  than  just  that  I  should  claim 
for  myself  and  concede  to  others  the  right  of  being  judged  by 
the  last  edition  rather  than  the  first.     That  a  persistent  en- 


1878  THE  AFGHAN   WAR  523 

deavour  to  free  myself  from  what  you  regard  as  Bacon's  charac- 
teristic vice  should  have  been  the  fruit  of  a  desire  to  follow  his 
example,  will  seem  strange  to  you,  but  it  is  fact  Perhaps  you 
will  think  it  not  less  strange^  but  it  is  my  real  belief,  that  if  your 
own  writings  had  been  in  existence  and  come  in  my  way  at  the 
same  critical  stage  of  my  mors^  and  mental  development,  they 
would  have  taught  me  the  same  lesson  and  inspired  me  with  the 
same  ambition;  for  in  that  particular  (if  I  may  say  it  without 
offence)  I  look  upon  you  both  as  eminent  examples  of  the  satm 
virtue. 

To  the  lecture  he  refers  once  more  in  a  letter  to  Mr. 
John  Morley.  The  political  situation  touched  on  in  this 
and  the  next  letter,  is  that  of  the  end  of  the  I^usso-Turkish 
war  and  the  beginning  of  the  Afghan  war. 


SaENCE  Schools,  South  Kensington, 
/>^.  7»  1878. 

My  dear  Morley — Many  thanks  for  the  cheque,  and  stHl 
more  for  the  good  word  for  the  article.*  I  knew  it  would 
"  draw  "  Hutton,  and  his  ingenuity  has  as  usual  made  the  best 
of  the  possibilities  of  attack,  I  am  glad  to  find,  however,  that 
he  does  not  think  it  expedient  to  reiterate  his  old  story  about 
the  valuelessness  of  vivisection  in  the  establishment  of  Uie  doc- 
trine of  the  circulation. 

I  hear  that  that  absurd  creature  R goes  about  declar- 
ing that  I  have  made  all  sorts  of  blunders.  Could  not  somebody 
be  got  to  persuade  him  to  put  what  he  has  to  say  in  black  and 
white  ? 

Controversy  is  as  abhorrent  to  me  as  gin  to  a  reclaimed 
drunkard ;  but  oh  dear !  it  would  be  so  nice  to  squelch  that  pomp- 
ous impostor. 

I  hope  you  admire  the  late  aspects  of  the  British  Lion.  His 
tail  goes  up  and  down  from  the  intercrural  to  the  stiffly  erect 
attitude  per  telegram,  while  his  head  is  sunk  in  the  windbag  of 
the  House  of  Commons. 

I  am  beginning  to  think  that  a  war  would  be  a  good  thing 
if  only  for  the  inevitable  clean  sweep  of  all  the  present  govern- 
ing people  which  it  would  bring  about. — Ever  yours  very  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

*  On  Harvey. 


524  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxxiii 


To  HIS  Eldest  Daughter 

Science  Schools,  South  Kensington. 
Dec,  7.  1878. 

Dearest  Jess — You  are  a  badly  used  young  person — ^you 
are;  and  nothing  short  of  that  conviction  would  get  a  letter 
out  of  your  still  worse  used  Pater  the  hete  noire  of  whose  exist- 
ence is  letter-writing. 

Catch  me  discussing  the -Afghan 'fluestion- with  you  you  little 
pepper  pot.  No,  not  if  I  know  it  Read  Fitzjames  Stephen's 
letter  in  the  Times,  also  Bartle  Frere's  memorandum,  also 
Napier  of  Magdala's  memo.    Them's  my  sentiments. 

Also  read  the  speech  of  Lord  Hartington  on  the  address. 
He  is  a  man  of  sense  like  his  father,  and  you  will  observe  that 
he  declares  that  the  Government  were  perfectly  within  their 
right  in  declaring  war  without  calling  Parliament  together.  .  .  . 

If  you  had  lived  as  long  as  I  have  and  seen  as  much  of  men, 
you  would  cease  to  be  surprised  at  the  reputations  men  of  essen- 
tially commonplace  powers — aided  by  circumstances  and  some 
amount  of  cleverness — obtain. 

I  am  as  strong  for  justice  as  any  one  can  be,  but  it  is  real 
justice,  not  sham  conventional  justice  which  the  sentimentalists 
howl  for. 

At  this  present  time  real  justice  requires  that  the  power  of 
England  should  be  used  to  maintain  order  and  introduce  civilisa- 
tion wherever  that  power  extends. 

The  Afghans  are  a  pack  of  disorderly  treacherous  blood- 
thirsty thieves  and  caterans  who  should  never  have  been  allowed 
to  escape  from  the  heavy  hand  we  laid  upon  them,  after  the 
massacre  of  twenty  thousand  of  our  men,  women  (and)  children 
in  the  Khoord  Cabul  Pass  thirty  years  ago. 

We  have  let  them  be,  and  the  consequence  is  they  now  lend 
themselves  to  the  Russians,  and  are  ready  to  stir  up  disorder 
and  undo  all  the  good  we  have  been  doing  in  India  for  the  last 
generation. 

They  are  to  India  exactly  what  the  Highlanders  of  Scotland 
were  to  the  Lowlanders  before  1745 ;  and  we  have  just  as  much 
right  to  deal  with  them  in  the  same  way. 

I  am  of  opinion  that  our  Indian  Empire  is  a  curse  to  us.  But 
so  long  as  we  make  up  our  minds  to  hold  it,  we  must  also  make 
up  our  minds  to  do  those  things  which  are  needful  to  hold  it 
effectually,  and  in  the  long-run  it  will  be  found  that  so  doing  is 


i878  SCOTTISH    UNIVERSITIES  COMMISSION  525 

real  justice  both  for  ourselves,  our  subject  population,  and  the 
Afghans  themselves. 

There,  you  plague. — Ever  your  affec.  Daddy, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

A  few  days  later  he  writes  to  his  son: — 

The  Liberals  are  making  fools  of  themselves,  and  "  the 
family  "  declare  I  am  becoming  a  Jingo !  Another  speech  from 
Gladstone  is  expected  to  complete  my  conversion. 

Among  other  occupations  he  still  had  to  attend  the 
Scottish  Universities  Commission,  for  wTiich  he  wrote  the 
paragraph  on  examinations  in  its  report ;  he  lectured  on  the 
Hand  at  the  Working  Men's  College ;  prepared  new  editions 
of  the  Physiography,  Elementary  Physiolbgy,  and  Vertebrate 
Anatomy,  and  at  length  brought  out  the  Introductory  Primer 
in  the  Science  Primer  Series,  in  quite  a  different  form  from 
what  he  had  originally  sketched  out.  But  his  chief  interest 
lay  in  the  Invertebrata.  From  April  29  to  June  3  he  lec- 
tured to  working  men  at  Jermyn  Street  upon  the  Crayfish ; 
read  a  paper  on  the  Classification  and  Distribution  of  Cray- 
fishes at  the  Zoological  Society  on  June  4,  and  lectured  at 
the  Zoological  Gardens  weekly  from  May  17  to  June  21  on 
Crustaceous  Animals.  In  all  this  work  lay  the  foundations 
of  his  subsequent  book  on  the  Cra)rfish,  which  I  find 
jotted  down  in  the  notes  of  this  year  to  be  written  as  an 
introduction  to  Zoology,  together  with  the  "  Dog,"  as  an 
introduction  to  the  Mammalia,  and  Man — already  dealt  with 
in  Man's  Place  in  Nature — as  an  introduction  to  Anthro- 
pology. This  projected  series  is  completed  with  a  half 
erased  note  of  an  introduction  to  Psychology,  which  per- 
haps found  some  expression  in  parts  of  the  Hume,  also 
written  this  year. 

He  notes  down  also,  work  on  the  Ascidians,  and  on  the 
morphology  of  the  Mollusca  and  Cephalopods  brought  back 
by  the  Challenger,  in  connection  with  which  he  now  began 
the  monograph  on  the  rare  creature  Spirula,  a  remarkable 
piece  of  work,  being  based  upon  the  dissections  of  a  single 
specimen,  but  destined  never  to  be  completed  by  his  hand,, 
though  his  drawings  were  actually  engraved,  and  nothing- 


526  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY         chap,  xxxm 

remained  but  to  put  a  few  finishing  touches  and  to  write 
detailed  descriptions  of  the  plates. 

Letters  to  W.  K,  Parker  and  Professor  Haeckel  touch  on 
this  part  of  his  work;  the  former,  indeed,  oflFering-  a  close 
parallel  to  a  story,  obviously  of  the  same  period,  which  the 
younger  Parker  tells  in  his  reminiscences,  to  illustrate  the 
way  in  which  he  would  be  utterly  engrossed  in  a  subject  for 
the  time  being.  Jeffery  Parker,  while  demonstrator  of  biol- 
ogy, came  to  him  with  a  question  about  the  brain  of  the 
codfish  at  a  time  when  he  was  deep  in  the  investigation  of 
some  invertebrate  group.  "  Codfish  ?  "  he  replied,  "  that's 
a  vertebrate,  isn't  it?  Ask  me  a  fortnight  hence,  and  I'll 
consider  it." 

•        4  Marlborough  Placr,  Sept.  25,  1878. 

My  dear  Parker — ^As  far  as  I  recollect  Amnioccetes  is  a 
vertebrated  animal — ^and  I  ignore  it. 

The  paper  you  refer  to  was  written  by  my  best  friend — a 
carefulish  kind  of  man — ^and  I  am  sure  that  he  saw  what  he 
says  he  saw,  as  if  I  had  seen  it  myself. 

But  what  the  fact  may  mean  and  whether  it  is  temporary 
or  permanent — ^is  thy  servant  a  dog  that  he  should  worry  him- 
self about  other  things  with  backbones?    Not  if  I  know  it. 

Churchill  has  got  over  a  whole  batch  of  the  American  edi- 
tion of  the  Vertehrata,  so  I  have  a  respite.  MoUusks  are  far 
more  interesting — bugs  sweeter — ^while  the  dinner  crayfish  hath 
no  parallel  for  intense  and  absorbing  interest  in  the  three  king- 
doms of  Nature. 

What  saith  the  Scripture?  "  Go  to  the  Ant  thou  sluggard." 
In  other  words,  study  the  Invertebrata. — Ever  yours  very  faith- 
fully, T.  H.  Huxley. 

[Sketch  of  a  vast  winged  ant  advancing  on  a  midget,  and 
saying,  as  it  looks  through  a  pair  of  eyeglasses,  "  well,  really, 
what  an  absurd  creature !  I  "  ] 

4  Marlborough  Place,  London. 
April  28,  1878. 
My  dear  Haeckel — Since  the  receipt  of  your  letter  three 
months  ago,  I  have  been  making  many  inquiries  about  Medustr 
for  you,  but  I  could  hear  of  none — ^and  so  I  have  delayed  my 
reply,  until  I  doubt  not  you  have  been  blaspheming  my  apparent 
neglect. 


1878  LETTER   TO   HAECKEL  527 

My  "  Sammlung  " ! !  ♦  My  dear  friend,  my  cabin  on  board 
H.M.S.  Rattlesnake  was  7  feet  long,  6  feet  wide,  and  5  feet  6 
inches  high.  When  my  bed  and  my  clothes  were  in  it,  there 
was  not  much  room  for  any  collection,  except  the  voluntary 
one  made  by  some  thousands  of  specimens  of  Blatta  OrientaliSyf 
with  whose  presence  I  should  have  been  very  glad  to  dispense. 

My  Medusa  were  never  published.  I  have  heaps  of  notes 
and  drawings  and  half-a-dozen  engraved  plates.  But  after  the 
publication  of  the  Oceanic  Hydrozoa  I  was  obliged  to  take  to 
quite  other  occupations,  and  all  that  material  is  like  the  **  full 
many  a  flower,  born  to  blush  unseen,"  of  our  poet. 

If  you  would  pay  us  a  visit  you*  should  look  through  the 
whole  mass,  if  you  liked,  and  you  might  find  something  in- 
teresting. 

At  present,  I  am  very  busy  about  Crayfishes  (Flusskrebse) 
working  out  the  relations  between  their  structure  and  their 
Geographical  Distril>ution,  which  are  very  curious  and  inter- 
esting. 

I  have  also  nearly  finished  the  anatomy  of  Spirula  for  the 
Challenger.  It  is  essentially  a  cuttlefish,  and  the  shell  is  really 
internal.  With  only  one  specimen,  is  has  been  a  long  and 
troublesome  job— but  I  shall  establish  all  the  essential  points 
and  give  half-a-dozen  plates  of  anatomy. 

You  will  recollect  my  eldefet  little  daughter?  She  is  going 
to  be  married  next  Saturday.  It  is  the  first  break  in  our  family, 
and  we  are  very  sad  to  lose  her — though  well  satisfied  with 
her  prospects.  She  is  but  just  twenty  and  a  charming  girl, 
though  you  may  put  that  down  to  fatherly  partiality  if 
you  like. 

The  second  daughter  has  taken  to  art,  and  will  make  a 
painter  if  she  be  wise  enough  not  to  marry  for  some  years. 

My  eldest  son  who  comes  next  is  taller  than  I  am.  He  has 
been  at  one  of  the  Scotch  Universities  for  the  last  six  months ; 
and  one  of  these  fine  days,  next  month,  you  will  see  a  fair-haired 
stripling  asking  for  Herr  Professor  Haeckel. 

I  am  going  to  send  him  to  Jena  for  three  months  to  pick  up 
your  noble  vernacular;  and  in  the  meanwhile  to  continue  his 
Greek  and  Mathematics,  in  which  the  young  gentleman  is  fairly 
proficient.  If  you  can  recommend  any  Professor  under  whom 
he  can  carry  on  his  studies,  it  will  be  a  g^eat  kindness. 

I  will  give  him  a  letter  to  you,  and  while  I  beg  you  not  to 

*  Collection.  f  1*he  cockroach. 


528  LIFE   OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxxiii 

give  yourself  any  trouble  about  him,  I  need  not  say  I  shall  be 
very  grateful  for  any  notice  you  may  take  of  him. 

I  am  giving  him  as  much  independence  of  action  as  possible, 
in  order  that  he  may  learn  to  take  care  of  himself. 

Now  that  is  enough  about  my  children.  Yours  must  yet  be 
young — and  you  have  not  yet  got  to  the  marriage  and  university 
stage — which  I  assure  you  is  much  more  troublesome  than  the 
measles  and  chicken-pox  period. 

My  wife  unites  with  me  in  kindest  remembrances  and  g^ood 
wishes. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

An  outbreak  of  diphtheria  among  his  children  made  the 
spring  of  1878  a  time  of  overwhelming  anxiety.  How  it 
told  upon  his  strong  and  self-contained  chief  is  related  by 
T.  J.  Parker — "  I  never  saw  a  man  more  crushed  than  he 
was  during  the  dangerous  illness  of  one  of  his  daughters, 
and  he  told  me  that,  having  then  to  make  an  after-dinner 
speech,  he  broke  down  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  and  for 
one  painful  moment  forgot  where  he  was  and  what  he  had 
to  say."  This  was  one  of  the  few  occasions  of  his  absence 
from  College  during  the  seventies.  "  When,  after  two  days, 
he  looked  in  at  the  laboratory,"  writes  Professor  Howes, 
"  his  dejected  countenance  and  tired  expression  beto- 
kened only  too  plainly  the  intense  anxiety  he  had  under- 
gone." 

The  history  of  the  outbreak  was  very  instructive.  Hux- 
ley took  a  leading  part  in  organising  an  enquiry  and  in 
looking  into  the  matter  with  the  health  officer.  "  As  soon 
as  I  can  get  all  the  facts  together,"  he  writes  on  Dec.  10, 
"  I  am  going  to  make  a  great  turmoil  about  our  outbreak 
of  diphtheria — and  see  whether  I  cannot  get  our  happy-go- 
lucky  local  government  mended."  As  usual,  the  epidemic 
was  due  to  culpable  negligence.  In  the  construction  of 
some  drains,  too  small  a  pipe  was  laid  down.  The  sewage 
could  not  escape,  and  flooded  back  in  a  low-lying  part  of 
Kilburn.  Diphtheria  soon  broke  out  close  by.  While  it 
was  raging  there,  a  St.  John's  Wood  dairyman  running 
short  of  milk,  sent  for  more  to  an  infected  dairy  in  Kilburn. 
*  Every  house  which  he  supplied  that  day  with  Kilburn  milk 
was  attacked  with  diphtheria. 


1878  VISIT   FROM   PROFESSOR   MARSH  529 

But  with  relief  from  this  heavy  strain,  his  spirits  instantly 
revived,  and  he  writes  to  Tyndall. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  May  20,  1878. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  wrote  you  a  most  downhearted  letter 
this  morning  about  Madge,  and  not  without  reason.  But  having 
been  away  four  hours,  I  come  home  to  find  a  wonderful  and 
blessed  change.  The  fever  has  abated  and  she  is  looking  like 
herself.  If  she  could  only  make  herself  heard,  I  should  have 
some  sauciness.    I  see  it  in  her  eyes. 

If  you  will  be  so  kind  as  to  kiss  everybody  you  meet  on  my 
account  it  will  be  a  satisfaction  to  me.  You  may  begin  with 
Mrs.  Tyndall !— Ever  yours,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Professor  Marsh,  with  whom  Huxley  had  stayed  at  Yale 
College  in  1876,  paid  his  promised  visit  to  England  imme- 
diately after  this. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W., 
June  24,  1878.     (Evening,) 

My  dear  Marsh — Welcome  to  England !  I  am  delighted  to 
hear  of  your  arrival — ^but  the  news  has  only  just  reached  me,  as 
I  have  been  away  since  Saturday  with  my  wife  and  sick  daugh- 
ter who  are  at  the  seaside.  A  great  deal  has  happened  to  us  in 
the  last  six  or  seven  weeks.  My  eldest  daughter  married,  and 
then  a  week  after  an  invasion  of  diphtheria,  which  struck  down 
my  eldest  son,  my  youngest  daughter,  and  my  eldest  remaining 
daughter  all  together.  Two  of  the  cases  were  light,  but  my 
poor  Madge  suffered  terribly,  and  for  some  ten  days  we  were 
in  sickening  anxiety  about  her.  She  is  slowly  gaining  strength 
now,  and  I  hope  there  is  no  more  cause  for  alarm — ^but  my 
household  is  all  to  pieces — the  Lares  and  Penates  gone,  and 
painters  and  disinfectors  in  their  places. 

You  will  certainly  have  to  run  down  to  Margate  and  see  my 
wife — or  never  expect  forgiveness  in  this  world. 

I  shall  be  at  the  Science  Schools,  South  Kensington,  to- 
morrow till  four — and  if  I  do  not  see  you  before  that  time  I 
shall  come  and  look  you  up  at  the  Palace  Hotel. — I  am,  yours 
very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

"  Is  it  not  provoking,"  he  writes  to  his  wife,  "  that  we 
should  all  be  dislocated  when  I  should  have  been  so  glad  to 
show  him  a  little  attention  ?  "    Still,  apart  from  this  week- 


S30 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxxiii 


end  at  the  seaside,  Professor  Marsh  was  not  entirely  neg- 
lected.   He  writes  in  his  Recollections  (p.  6) : — 

How  kind  Huxley  was  to  everyone  who  could  claim  his 
friendship,  I  have  good  cause  to  know.  Of  the  many  instances 
which  occur  to  me,  one  will  suffice.  One  evening  in  London  at 
a  grand  annual  reception  of  the  Royal  Academy,  where  celebri- 
ties of  every  rank  were  present,  Huxley  said  to  me,  "  When  I 
was  in  America,  you  showed  me  every  extinct  animal  that  I  had 
read  about,  or  even  dreamt  of.  Now,  if  there  is  a  single  living 
lion  in  all  Great  Britain  that  you  wish  to  see,  I  will  shovr  him 
to  you  in  five  minutes."  He  kept  his  promise,  and  before  the 
reception  was  over,  I  had  met  many  of  the  most  noted  men  of 
England,  and  from  that  evening,  I  can  date  a  large  number  of 
acquaintances,  who  have  made  my  subsequent  visits  to  that 
country  an  ever-increasing  pleasure. 

As  for  his  summer  occupations,  he  writes  to  his  eldest 
daughter  on  July  2 : — 

No,  young  woman,  you  don't  catch  me  attending  any  con- 
gresses I  can  avoid,  not  even  if  F.  is  an  artful  committee-man. 
I  must  go  to  the  British  Association  at  Dublin — for  my  sins — 
and  after  that  we  have  promised  to  pay  a  visit  in  Ireland  to  Sir 
Victor  Brooke.  After  that  I  must  settle  myself  down  in  Pen- 
maenmawr  and  write  a  little  book  about  David  Hume — before 
the  grindery  of  the  winter  begins. 

The  meeting  of  the  British  Association  took  place  this 
year  in  the  third  week  of  August  at  Dublin.  Huxley  gave 
an  address  in  the  Anthropological  subsection,*  and  on  the 
•  20th  received  the  honorary  degree  of  LL.D.  from  Dublin 
University,  the  Public  Orator  presenting  him  in  the  follow- 
ing words : — 

Praesento  vobis  Thomam  Henricum  Huxley — hominem  vere 
physicum — ^hominem  facundum,  lepidum,  venustum — eundem 
autem  nihil  (philosophia  modo  sua  lucem  praeferat)  reformidan- 
tem — ne  illud  quidem  Ennianum, 

Simia  quam  similis,  turpissinla  bestia,  nobis. 

*  *•  Informal  Remarks  on  the  Conclusions  of  Anthropology,"  B.  A. 
Report,  1878,  pp.  573-578. 


i878  HIS  BOOK  ON   HUME  531 

The  extract  above  given  contains  the  first  reference  to 
the  book  on  Hume,*  written  this  summer  as  a  holiday 
occupation  at  Penmaenmawr.  The  speed  at  which  it  was 
composed  is  remarkable,  even  allowing  for  his  close  knowl- 
edge of  the  subject,  acquired  many  years  before.  Though 
he  had  been  "  picking  at  it "  earlier  in  the  summer,  the 
whole  of  the  philosophical  part  was  written  during  Sep- 
tember, leaving  the  biographical  part  to  be  done  later. 

The  following  letters  from  Marlborough  Place  show  him 
at  work  upon  the  book : — 

March  31,  1878. 

My  dear  Morley — I  like  the  notion  of  undertaking  your 
Hume  book,  and  I  don't  see  why  I  should  not  get  it  done  this 
autumn.  But  you  must  not  consider  me  pledged  on  that  point, 
as  I  cannot  quite  command  my  time. 

TuUoch  sent  me  his  book  on  Pascal.  It  was  interesting  as 
everything  about  Pascal  must  be,  but  Tulloch  is  not  a  model 
of  style. 

I  have  looked  into  Bruton's  book,  but  I  shall  now  get  it  and 
stt^dy  it.  Hume's  correspondence  with  Rousseau  seems  to  me 
typical  of  the  man's  sweet,  easy-going  nature.  Do  you  mean 
to  have  a  portrait  of  each  of  your  men?  I  think  it  is  a  great 
comfort  in  a  biography  to  get  a  notion  of  the  subject  in  the 
flesh. 

I  have  rather  made  it  a  rule  not  to  part  with  my  property 
in  my  books — but  I  daresay  that  can  be  arranged  with  Mac- 
millan.  Anyhow  I  shall  be  content  to  abide  by  the  general 
arrangement  if  you  have  made  one. 

We  have  had  a  bad  evening.  Clifford  has  been  here,  and 
he  is  extremely  ill — in  fact  I  fear  the  worst  for  him. 

It  is  a  thousand  pities,  for  he  has  a  fine  nature  all  round, 
and  time  would  have  ripened  him  into  something  very  consid- 
erable. We  arc  all  very  fond  of  him. — Ever  yours  very  faith- 
fully,. T.  H.  Huxley. 

July  6,  1878. 
My  dear  Morley — Very  many  thanks  for  Diderot.    I  have 
made  a  plunge  into  the  first  volume  and  found  it  very  interesting. 
I  wish  you  had  put  a  portrait  of  him  as  a  frontispiece.    I  have 
seen  one — a  wonderful  face,  something  like  Goethe's. 

*  In  the  *' English  Men  of  Letters"  series,  edited  by  Mr.  John 
Morley. 


532 


LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR  HUXLEY        ctiap.  xxxin 


I  am  picking  at  Htune  at  odd  times.  It  seems  to  me  that  1 
had  better  make  an  analysis  and  criticism  of  the  *'  Inquiry,"  the 
backbone  of  the  essay — ^as  it  touches  all  the  problems  which 
interest  us  most  just  now.  I  have  already  sketdied  out  a  chap- 
ter on  Miracles,  which  will,  I  hope,  be  very  edifying  in  conse- 
quence of  its  entire  agreement  with  the  orthodox  arguments 
against  Hume's  a  priori  reasonings  against  miracles. 

Hume  wasn't  half  a  sceptic  after  all.  And  so  long  as  he  got 
deep  enough  to  worry  Orthodoxy,  he  did  not  care  to  go  to  the 
bottom  of  things. 

He  failed  to  see  the  importance  of  suggestions  already  made 
both  by  Locke  and  Berkeley. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

S^t.  30,  1878. 

My  dear  Morley — Praise  me  1  I  have  been  hard  at  work  at 
Hume  at  Penmaenmawr,  and  I  have  got  the  hard  part  of  the 
business — ^the  account  of  his  philosophy — ^blocked  out  in  the 
bodily  shape  of  about  180  pages  foolscap  MS. 

But  I  find  the  job  as  tough  as  it  is  interesting.  Hume*s 
diamonds,  before  the  public  can  see  them  properly,  want  a 
proper  setting  in  a  methodical  and  consistent  shape — and  that 
implies  writing  a  small  psychological  treatise  of  one's  own,  and 
then  cutting  it  down  into  as  unobtrusive  a  form  as  possible. 

So  I  am  working  away  at  my  draught — from  the  point  of 
view  of  an  aesthetic  jeweller. 

As  soon  as  I  get  it  into  such  a  condition  as  will  need  only 
verbal  trimming,  I  should  like  to  have  it  set  up  in  type.  For  it 
is  a  defect  of  mine  that  I  can  never  judge  properly  of  any  com- 
position of  my  own  in  manuscript 

Moreover  (don't  swear  at  this  wish)  I  should  very  much 
like  to  send  it  to  you  in  that  shape  for  criticism. 

The  Life  will  be  an  easy  business.  I  should  like  to  get  the 
book  out  of  hand  before  Christmas,  and  will  do  so  if  possible. 
But  my  lectures  begin  on  Tuesday,  and  I  cannot  promise. — Ever 
yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Oc/.  21,  1878. 

My  dear  Morley — I  have  received  slips  up  to  chap.  ix. 
of  Hume,  and  so  far  I  do  not  think  (saving  your  critical  pre- 
sence) that  there  will  be  much  need  of  much  modification  or  in- 
terpolation. 

I  have  made  all  my  citations  from  a  4-vol.  edition  of  Hume, 


1878  HIS  BOOK   ON   HUME  533 

published  by  Black  and  Tait  in  1826,  which  has  long  been  in  my 
possession. 

Do  you  think  I  ought  to  quote  Green  and  Grose's  edition  ?  It 
will  be  a  great  bother,  and  I  really  don't  think  that  the  under- 
standing of  Hume  is  improved  by  going  back  to  eighteenth- 
century  spelling. 

I  am  at  work  upon  the  Life,  which'  should  not  take  long. 
But  I  wish  that  I  had  polished  that  off  at  Penmaenmawr  as  well. 
What  with  lecturing  five  days  a  week,  and  toiling  at  two  ana- 
tomical monographs,  it  is  hard  to  find  time. 

As  soon  as  I  have  gone  through  all  the  eleven  chapters  about 
the  Philosophy — I  will  send  them  to  you  and  get  you  to  come 
and  dine  some  day — after  you  have  looked  at  them — and  go  into 
it. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

Science  Schools,  S.  Kensington,  Oct.  29,  1878. 

My  dear  Morley — Your  letter  has  given  me  great  pleasure. 
For  though  I  have  thoroughly  enjoyed  the  work,  and  seemed  to 
myself  to  have  got  at  the  heart  of  Hume's  way  of  thinking,  I 
could  not  tell  how  it  would  appear  to  others,  still  less  could  I 
pretend  to  judge  of  the  literary  form  of  what  I  had  written. 
And  as  I  was  quite  prepared  to  accept  your  judgment  if  it  had 
been  unfavourable,  so  being  what  it  is,  I  hug  myself  propor- 
tionately and  begin  to  give  myself  airs  as  a  man  of  letters. 

I  am  through  all  the  interesting  part  of  Hume's  life — ^that 
is,  the  struggling  part  of  it — and  David  the  successful  and  the 
feted  begins  rather  to  bore  me,  as  I  am  sorry  to  say  most  suc- 
cessful people  do.  I  hope  to  send  the  first  chapter  to  press  in 
another  week. 

Might  it  not  be  better,  by  the  way,  to  divide  the  little  book 
into  two  parts? 

Part  I. — Life,  Literary  and  Political  work. 

Part  II.— Philosophy, 
subdividing  the  latter  into  chapters  or  sections  ?    Please  tell  me 
what  you  think. 

I  have  not  received  the  last  chapter  from  the  printer  yet. 
When  I  do  I  will  finish  revising,  and  then  ask  you  to  come  and 
have  a  symposium  over  it. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

P.S. — Macmillan  has  a  lien  on  "  The  Hand."  I  gave  part 
of  the  lecture  in  another  shape  at  Glasgow  two  years  ago,  and 
M.  had  it  reported  for  his  magazine.  If  he  is  good  and  patient 
he  will  get  it  in  some  shape  some  day ! 


534  LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR  HUXLEY         chap,  xxxiii 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  Nov.  5,  1878. 

My  dear  Morley — "  Davie's  "  philosophy  is  now  all  in  print, 
and  all  but  a  few  final  pages  of  his  biography. 

So  I  think  the  time  has  come  when  that  little  critical  sym- 
posium may  take  place. 

Can  you  come  and  dine  on  Tuesday  next  (12)  at  7,  or  if 
any  day  except  Wednesday  15th,  next  week,  will  suit  you  better, 
it  will  do  just  as  well  for  me.  There  will  be  nobody  but  my  wife 
and  daughters,  so  don't  dress. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

PS, — Will  you  be  disgusted  if  in  imitation  of  the  "  English 
Men  of  Letters  "  I  set  a-going  an  "  English  Men  of  Science." 
Few  people  have  any  conception  of  the  part  Englishmen  have 
played  in  science,  and  I  think  it  would  be  both  useful  and  in- 
teresting to  bring  the  truth  home  to  the  English  mind. 

I  had  about  three  thousand  people  to  hear  me  on  Saturday 
at  Manchester,  and  it  would  have  done  you  good  to  hear  how 
they  cheered  at  my  allusion  to  personal  rule.  I  had  to  stop  and 
let  them  ease  their  souls. 

Behold  my  PS,  is  longer  than  my  letter.  It's  the  strong 
feminine  element  in  my  character  oozing  out.  "  Desinit  in 
piscem  "  thou^,  and  a  mighty  queer  fish  too. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  yii«.  12,  1879. 

Dear  Lecky — I  am  very  much  obliged  for  your  suggestion 
about  the  note  at  p.  9.  I  am  ashamed  to  say  that  though  the 
eleven  day  correction  was  familiar  enough  to  me,  I  had  never 
thought  about  the  shifting  of  the  beginning  of  the  year  till  you 
mentioned  it.  It  is  a  law  of  nature,  I  believe,  that  when  a  man 
says  what  he  need  not  say  he  is  sure  to  blunder.  The  note  shall 
go  out. 

All  I  know  about  Sprat  is  as  the  author  of  a  dull  history  of 
the  Royal  Society,  so  I  was  surprised  to  meet  with  Hume's  esti- 
mate of  him. 

No  doubt  about  the  general  hatred  of  the  Scotch,  but  you 
will  observe  that  I  make  Millar  responsible  for  the  peace-making 
assurance. 

What  you  said  to  me  in  conversation  some  time  ago  led  me 
to  look  at  Hume's  position  as  a  moralist  with  some  care,  and 
I  quoted  the  passage  at  p.  206  that  no  doubt  might  be  left  on  the 
matter. 

The  little  book  threatened  to  grow  to  an  undue  length,  and 


i878  "ENGLISH   MEN   OF  SCIENCE"  SERIES  535 

therefore  the  question  of  morals  is  treated  more  briefly  than 
was  perhaps  desirable. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Early  in  November  I  find  the  first  reference  to  a  pro- 
posed, but  never  completed,  "  English  Men  of  Science " 
series  in  the  letter  to  Mr.  Morley  above.  The  following 
letters,  especially  those  to  Sir  H.  Roscoe,  with  whom  he 
was  concerting  the  series,  give  some  idea  of  its  scope : — 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  Dec.  10,  1878. 

My  dear  Roscoe — You  will  think  that  I  have  broken  out 
into  letter-writing  in  a  very  unwonted  fashion,  but  I  forgot  half 
of  what  I  had  to  say  this  morning. 

After  a  good  deal  of  consultation  with  Macmillans,  who 
were  anxious  that  the  "  English  Men  of  Science  "  series  should 
not  be  too  extensive,  I  have  arranged  the  books  as  follows: — 

1.  Roger  Bacon. 

2.  Harvey  and  the  Physiologists  of  the  17th  century. 

3.  Robert  Boyle  and  the  Royal  Society. 

4.  Isaac  Newton. 

5.  Charles  Darwin. 

6.  English  Physicists,  Gilbert,  Young,  Faraday,  Joule. 

7.  English   Chemists,   Black,   Priestley,   Cavendish,   Davy, 

Dalton. 

8.  English  Physiologists  and  Zoologists  of  the  i8th  century, 

Hunter,  etc. 

9.  English  Botanists,  Ray,  Crew,  Hales,  Brown. 
10.  English  Geologists,  Hutton,  Smith,  Lyell. 

We  may  throw  in  the  astronomers  if  the  thing  goes. 

Green  of  Leeds  will  undertake  10;  Dyer,  with  Hooker's  aid, 
9;  M.  Foster  8;  and  I  look  to  you  for  7. 

Tyndall  has  half  promised  to  do  Boyle,  and  I  hope  he  will. 
Clerk  Maxwell  can't  undertake  Newton,  and  hints  X.  But  I 
won't  have  X. — he  is  too  much  of  a  bolter  to  go  into  the  tandem. 
I  am  thinking  of  asking  Moulton,  who  is  strongly  recommended 
by  Spottiswoode,  and  is  a  very  able  fellow,  likely  to  put  his 
strength  into  it. 

Do  you  know  anything  about  Chrystal  of  St.  Andrews?* 

*  Now  Professor  of  Mathematics  at  Edinburgh. 

35 


536  LIFE  OF  PROFESSOR   HUXLEY        chap,  xxxm 

I  forget  whether  I  asked  you  before.  From  all  I  hear  of  him  I 
expect  he  would  do  No.  6  very  well.  I  have  written  to  Adamson 
by  this  post. 

I  shall  get  off  with  Harvey  and  Darwin  to  my  share. — 
Ever  yours  very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.W.,  Dfc.  26,  1878. 

My  dear  Roscoe — I  was  very  loth  to  lump  the  chemists 
together,  but  Max  was  very  strong  about  not  having  too  many 
books  in  the  series;  and  on  the  other  hand,  I  had  my  doubts 
how  far  the  chemists  were  capable  of  "  dissociation  "  'without 
making  the  book  too  technical. 

But  I  do  not  regard  the  present  arrangement  as  unalterable, 
and  if  you  think  the  early  chemists  and  the  later  chemists  would 
do  better  in  two  separate  groups,  the  matter  is  quite  open  to 
consideration. 

Maxwell  says  he  is  overdone  with  work  already,  and  alto- 
gether declines  to  take  anything  new.  I  shall  have  to  look 
about  me  for  a  man  to  do  the  Physikers. 

Of  course  Adamson  will  have  to  take  in  a  view  of  the  sci- 
ence of  the  middle  ages.  That  will  be  one  of  the  most  interest- 
ing parts  of  the  book,  and  I  hope  he  will  do  it  well.  I  suppose 
he  knows  his  Dante. 

The  final  cause  of  boys  is  to  catch  something  or  other.  I 
trust  that  yours  is  demeasling  himself  properly. — Ever  yours 
very  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Dtr.  1878. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  consider  your  saying  the  other  even- 
ing that  you  would  see  "  anyone  else  d -d  first,"  before  you 

would  assent  to  the  little  proposal  I  made  to  you,  as  the  most 
distinct  and  binding  acceptance  you  are  capable  of.  You  have 
nothing  else  to  swear  by,  and  so  you  swear  at  everybody  but  me 
when  you  want  to  pledge  yourself. 

It  will  release  me  of  an  immense  difficulty  if  you  will  under- 
take R.  Boyle  and  the  Royal  Society  (which  of  course  includes 
Hooke)  ;  and  the  subject  is  a  capital  one. 

The  book  should  not  exceed  about  200  pages,  and  you  need 
not  be  ready  before  this  time  next  year.  There  could  not  be  a 
more  refreshing  piece  of  work  just  to  enliven  the  doke  far 
niente  of  the  Bel  Alp.  (That  is  quite  d  la  Knowles,  and  I  begin 
to  think  I  have  some  faculty  as  an  editor.) 


1878  ILLNESS  OF  W.  K.  CLIFFORD  537 

Settle  your  own  terms  with  Macmillan.  They  will  be  as 
joyful  as  I  shall  be  to  know  you  are  going  to  take  part  in  the 
enterprise. — Ever  yours  faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  Dec.  31,  1878. 

My  dear  Tyndall — I  would  sooner  have  your  Boyle,  how- 
ever long  we  may  have  to  wait  for  it,  than  anybody  else's  d d 

simmer.     (Now  that's  a  "goak,"  and  you  must  ask  Mrs.  Tyn- 
dall to  explain  it  to  you.) 

Two  years  will  I  give  you  from  this  blessed  New  Year's  eve, 
1878,  and  if  it  isn't  done  on  New  Year's  Day  1881  you  shall 
not  be  admitted  to  the  company  of  the  blessed,  but  your  dinner 
shall  be  sent  to  you  between  two  plates  to  the  most  pestiferous 
corner  of  the  laboratory  of  the  Royal  Institution.  I  am  very 
glad  you  will  undertake  the  job,  and  feel  that  I  have  a  proper 
New  Year's  gift. 

By  the  way,  you  ought  to  have  had  Hume  ere  this.  Mac- 
millan sent  me  two  or  three  copies,  just  to  keep  his  word,  on 
Christmas  Day,  and  I  thought  I  should  have  a  lot  more  at  once. 

But  there  is  no  sign — not  even  an  advertisement — and  I 
don't  know  what  has  become  of  the  edition.  Perhaps  the  bishops 
have  bought  it  up. — With  all  good  wishes.  Ever  yours, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

Two  letters — both  to  Tyndall — show  his  solicitude  for 
his  friends.  The  one  speaks  of  a  last  and  unavailing  at- 
tempt made  by  W.  K.  Clifford's  friends  to  save  his  life  by 
sending  him  on  a  voyage  (he  died  not  long  after  at  Ma- 
deira) ;  the  other  urges  Tyndall  himself  to  be  careful  of  his 
health. 

4  Marlborough  Place,  April  2,  1878. 

My  dear  Tyndall — We  had  a  sort  of  council  about  Clifford 
at  Clark's  house  yesterday  morning — H.  Thompson,  Corfield, 
Payne,  Pollock,  and  myself,  and  I  am  sure  you  will  be  glad  to 
hear  the  result. 

From  the  full  statement  of  the  nature  of  his  case  made  by 
Clark  and.  Corfield,  it  appears  that  though  grave  enough  in  all 
conscience,  it  is  not  so  bad  as  it  might  be,  and  that  there  is  a 
chance,  I  might  almost  say  a  fair  chance,  for  him  yet.  It 
appears  that  the  lung  mischief  has  never  gone  so  far  as  the 
formation  of  a  cavity,  and  that  it  is  at  present  quiescent,  and  no 
other  organic  disease  is  discoverable.     The  alarming  symptom 


538 


LIFE  OF   PROFESSOR   HUXLEY         chap,  xxxiii 


is  a  general  prostration — very  sadly  obvious  when  he  was  with 
us  on  Sunday — which,  as  I  understand,  rather  renders  hira 
specially  obnoxious  to  a  sudden  and  rapid  development  of  the 
lung  disease  than  is  itself  to  be  feared. 

It  was  agreed  that  they  should  go  at  once  to  Gibraltar  by  the 
P.  and  O.,  and  report  progress  when  he  gets  there.  If  strong 
enough  he  is  to  go  on  a  cruise  round  the  Mediterranean,  and  if 
he  improves  by  this  he  is  to  go  away  for  a  year  to  Bogota  (in 
S.  America)  which  appears  to  be  a  favourable  climate  for  such 
cases  as  his. 

If  he  gets  worse  he  can  but  return.  I  have  done  my  best  to 
impress  upon  him  and  his  wife  the  necessity  of  extreme  care, 
and  I  hope  they  will  be  wise. 

It  is  very  pleasant  to  find  how  good  and  cordial  everybody  is, 
helpful  in  word  and  deed  to  the  poor  young  people.  I  know  it 
will  rejoice  the  cockles  of  your  generous  old  heart  to  hear  it. 

As  for  yourself,  I  trust  you  are  mending  and  allowing  your- 
self to  be  taken  care  of  by  your  household  goddess. 

With  our  united  love  to  her  and  yourself, — Ever  yours 
faithfully,  T.  H.  Huxley. 

I  sent  your  cheque  to  Yeo. 

May,  1878. 

My  dear  Tyndall — You  were  very  much  wanted  on  Satur- 
day, as  your  wife  will  have  told  you,  but  for  all  that  I  would  not 
have  had  you  come  on  any  account.  You  want  a  thorough  long 
rest  and  freedom  from  excitement  of  all  sorts,  and  I  am  rejoiced 
to  hear  that  you  are  going  out  of  the  hurly-burly  of  London  as 
soon  as  possible;  and,  not  to  be  uncivil,  I  do  hope  ydu  will  stay 
away  as  long  as  possible,  and  not  be  deluded  into  taking  up  any 
exciting  pursuit  as  soon  as  you  feel  lively  again  among  your 
mountains. 

Pray  give  up  Dublin.  If  you  don't,  I  declare  I  will  try  if 
I  have  enough  influence  with  the  council  to  get  you  turned  out 
of  your  office  of  Lecturer,  and  superseded. 

Do  seriously  consider  this,  as  you  will  be  undoing  the  good 
results  of  your  summer's  rest.  I  believe  your  heart  is  as  sound 
as  your  watch  was  when  you  went  on  your  memorable  slide,* 
but  if  you  go  slithering  down  avalanches  of  work  and  worry 
you  can't  always  expect  to  pick  up  "the  little  creature"  none 


*  On  the   Piz  Morteratsch  :  Hours  of  Exercise  in  tfu  Alps^  by  J. 
Tyndall,  ch.  xix. 


1878  PARENTAL  ADVICE  539 

the  worse.  The  apparatus  is  by  one  of  the  best  makers,  but  it 
has  been  some  years  in  use,  and  can't  be  expected  to  stand  rough 
work. 

You  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  we  had  cheerier  news  of 
CliflFord  on  Saturday.  He  was  distinctly  better,  and  setting  out 
on  his  Mediterranean  voyage. — Ever  yours  very  faithfully, 

T.  H.  Huxley. 

A  birthday  letter  to  his  son  concludes  the  year : 

4  Marlborough  Place,  N.  W.,  Dec,  10,  1878. 

Your  mother  reminds  me  that  to-morrow  is  your  eighteenth 
birthday,  and  though  I  know  that  my  "happy  returns"  will 
reach  you  a  few  hours  too  late  I  cannot  but  send  them. 

You  are  touching  manhood  now,  my  dear  laddie,  and  I 
trust  that  as  a  man  your  mother  and  I  may  always  find  reason 
to  regard  you  as  we  have  done  throughout  your  boyhood. 

The  great  thing  in  the  world  is  not  so  much  to  seek  happi- 
ness as  to  earn  peace  and  self-respect.  I  have  not  troubled  you 
much  with  paternal  didactics — but  that  bit  is  "ower  true"  and 
worth  thinking  over. 


END    OF   VOL.    I 


HH2P7J  J 


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a  day  Is  incurred  by 
specified  time. 

pdy.